How to Stretch Mitered Pieces
George VondriskaHave you ever cut a mitered frame and ended up with a piece that was just a tiny bit too short, leaving a gap in your frame? If you haven’t, and all your mitered frames have just fit perfectly right out of the gate, congratulations because you might just be the only one!
For the rest of us, this can be a perplexing process. There is a temptation to use wood filler to hide the gap, and finish over the top of it. You can do that, but chances are you’ll be able to see the filler from 20 paces, and your heart will be filled with regret every time it catches your eye. Your next thought might be that you have to cut another piece, and if you have money to burn, that approach can work for you.
Another fix is simpler and cheaper than either of these approaches, and utilizes the mythical and legendary concept of a board stretcher. In this situation, there actually IS such a creature! This approach consists of two simple steps;
Stretch the board. This is actually done by making the board narrower rather than longer, which extends the distance between the points on the short end, effectively making the board longer and filling in the gap. The trick is simple, effective and takes virtually no time.
Cover your tracks. The affected board will now be narrower than the other components in the frame, so those pieces will need to be sanded flush with the board that you have modified.
There are several tips for making perfect miter cuts, and it’s great when perfection can happen, but for the odd situation where a gap is created it’s nice to know that there is a quick fix that can be applied and nobody will know.
Maybe this has happened to you, if not, wow, good for you. What I'm talking about is getting mitered trim all the way around a piece. And in this case, as I'm trimming this thing out, and I cut this piece, I cut it just a smidge too short. That's why there's a gap right there. This is, wood filler is not the solution here.
We can actually make this work. And what I'm gonna do is just grab this board and if I really pull on it... No, we can't really stretch the board. But here's the thing. Think about some geometry here.
If I take this board and I remove a little bit of material off the bottom, what I just did is I made the distance from short point to short point of the miter greater. I've increased that length. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna run over to the joiner, with the joiner set at a very, very light depth of cut, 32nd of an inch. I'm gonna do one pass. Then we're gonna come back and nest that in there between the two miters and see what we've got.
Another pass if needed. If you take too much off and it doesn't seat in, then we're back to the miter saw to trim the miters until we get it to fit. But let's first start with that joiner pass and see what happens. Yeah. So what we're looking for is, do we still close along there?
Does the errant miter close? So what's nice about this is, it fixed this piece. Now what's gonna happen is if we look way out here at the outside corner, it's almost microscopic here, but the camera guys are really good. So they're gonna get it. This piece is sticking up slightly past the edge of this piece, 'cause we just made the horizontal piece narrower.
But big picture, if I glue this piece of banding in here, and I close everything up, and I come back and I sand this for about a bazillion of a second, nobody's gonna know that that right there projected past that. It's a great fix. So this is a really, really good thing to know about, 'cause sometimes things just happen. And this is a very easy way to stretch that board, and get it to fit where previously you thought it was gonna be too short.
If your corner is to far off, rather then knocking down the corner a billionth of a second by using sandpaper, you can use a hand plane going the full length of the stile, this allows you to "stretch" the miter as much as needed. If staining, this prevent the end grain on the miter from coming up darker and keeps it sharp rather than rounding it over.
Just an idea to deal with the unequal edges, why not run the outside edges of the other pieces through the joiner to narrow them ever so slightly and get them to match up with the new narrower piece? I would only do this after the entire dry fit as this will undoubtedly cascade into larger issues if you are not extremely careful. Thoughts?
Another repeat?!!!
Hi George I have with interest followed your videos and my question relates to a previous video where you used a disc sander on your table saw. If I remembered correctly - it had a flat side as well as a tapered side on the other side - you used this on your table saw. Being from South Africa - - I do not seem to be able to source this item here - - therefore if you could direct me to a distributor or institution where I could source this from in the USA or else where and consequently order this then from them - I would greatly appreciate the information. Thank you and best regards Rocky
Just an added tip to this. As George stated that once the piece is glued into place it will be slightly lower in profile to the tips of the joining sides. Be sure to gently sand the protruding tips in towards the project as opposed to away from it to prevent tear-out on the outside edges.
Great Tip! Very useful
This is a great tip! I wish I knew about it long ago, had several boards come up just a tad short.
One of the most useful tips I have seen on mitered corners. Thanks.
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