Shoutout to the old timer who told me to quit fighting crown molding with caulk and just cope it

Angela Fisher · 2026-09-22T10:25:04.602346+00:00

I spent almost 9 hours last Saturday on one corner of crown molding in a dining room out in Beaverton, and I am not proud of that number. My usual move was to miter both pieces, slap them up, and then fill the gap with caulk and paint over it, which honestly looks fine until the seasons change and the joint opens right back up. This time the walls were so far out of square that my miter left a gap you could slide a putty knife through, so I kept recutting and recutting and making it worse. A retired guy named Walt who does trim for the same builder stopped by to drop off some baseboard, watched me for a minute, and said almost nothing. Then he asked why I was making this so hard when a coping saw and 20 minutes would do it right. I had never really learned to cope because nobody showed me, but he sat there and walked me through undercutting the profile and back beveling it, and the piece snapped in tight on the first try. I've done it that way on the last three jobs now and every joint has stayed closed. Anybody got a favorite coping saw blade for tall profiles, because mine wanders on the thick stuff.

Rigidtalk

Loading…

Shoutout to the old timer who told me to quit fighting crown molding with caulk and just cope it | Carpenters - Rigidtalk