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One of the projects I’ve had “on the go” for far too long, has been putting new skirting boards in downstairs, since the old ones were pulled off as part of the plastering work we had done in March (it was that long ago! eeek!).

My first attempt at cutting the joins resulted in dangerously high blood pressure on my part, and almost losing my temper on a number of occasions (when I do very silly and counterproductive things to the task at hand). So I figured “there must be a better way”, and did what every self-respecting geek should do when the DIY is going pear-shaped, and that’s turn on the computer and do some google-ing.

The problem, you see, is not the 45 degree angles, oh no. Those were (on the whole) fine. The problem was the house. It’s not new, and it’d been re-plastered where I was working, which meant that none of the angles were precisely 45 degrees, or 125 degrees, or whatever the various settings you could set on the mitre saw I had, or the useless mitre block I bought (and ended up cutting rather than the skirting boards. Who’s idea was it to make them out of plastic??).

So, that’s where I found the Magic Mitre, and duly ordered it, only to leave it hanging about the house for a month before I had a go with it last weekend. A shortage of a suitable saw, and enough clamps, put pay to my efforts then. But today I’m pleased to say I started - and almost finished - the front room. Mainly because of this superb invention.

Not only is the plastic block stronger and more resistant to being cut, the ingenious setup (you measure the angle with a provided tool, then set the mitre properly, and precisely, ready for cutting) means that you get almost perfect mitred joints each time. And that’s priceless in a house with no even numbered angles anywhere to be seen.

So I “zoomed” (well, relatively speaking) around the front room. The only problem now was attaching the skirting boards to the wall. Uneven walls mean you can’t easily glue the wood to the wall, nails would crack the plaster, and screws would take an age. So I stuck (ahaha!) to gluing, and got there in the end.

So the front room is almost complete, and I’m feeling reasonably confident that the kitchen/dining room should be easy to do now I’ve hit, and solved, almost every hassle. So, as far as DIY gadgets go, The Magic Mitre takes some beating, and at £30 a pop, it’s not cheap, but the reduced blood pressure, precise results, mean I’ll be getting rid of my old mitre saw in favour of this, and heartily recommend it to anybody considering any sort of mitring. Marvellous!

See also: New Gadgets (part 2): Devolo dLAN Ethernet over mains.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 24th, 2006 at 6:42 pm and is filed under Gadgets, House, Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.