The face frame and sides of the cabinet are joined with a miter joint. I was initially concerned that cutting the miter was going to be quite a challenge, especially on the face frame. The stiles are tapered, so using my left-tilt table saw with the fence as a guide wouldn’t work. I could have cut the miters before I tapered them, but I felt that was too early in the process to give me the accuracy I wanted.
At Cerritos College, where I teach, we use a method that was perfect for my project. One of our students, Gene Leslie, saw the method on a web site somewhere (I wish I could give them credit). It’s one of those methods you wish you had come up with yourself.
It requires a simple jig: two pieces of sheet material, about 3/4″ x 2″ x (the length of your fence), butt jointed together with screws. A cutout at each end of the horizontal piece allows the assembly to be clamped to your fence (see the photo). The height of the jig is critical; the bottom should be 1/8″ lower than the thickness of the material being cut. The fence setting is even more important. It must be set so that the blade cuts the miter but leaves a very small flat on the top edge of the board. If the flat is too big, you have to round the completed corner a lot. If you have no flat, then you are inviting disaster. That means that you have no reference for the workpiece to guide you on the back side of the cut; at a minimum you will get ”snipe” at the end of your cut and, worst case, you’ll get a kickback. If you don’t totally understand this process, don’t try it!
I try to set things up so the flat is about 1/64″ wide. It takes some fiddling and test cuts to get everything lined up just right. Precision is key to getting a good miter, along with a sharp, clean blade and consistent pressure during the cut. To make the cut, just push the material past the blade and against the jig. The offcut will safely rest under the jig, safely out of harm’s way. Note that if you just used a sacrificial fence flat against your saw’s fence, the offcut would be trapped between the sacrificial fence and the blade. That would almost certainly create a serious kickback, involving a narrow, sharp-edged object. Serious injury could result.
Note also that on my left-tilt saw, I have to put the fence and jig on the left side of the blade. This is the only situation of which I am aware where a right-tilt saw is preferable to a left-tilt saw. That explains why many cabinetmakers prefer a right-tilt saw.