Compound angles are formed by cutting wood at an angle to the horizontal and vertical plane. They are important for creating tight-fitting joints in structures such as buildings, furniture, and picture frames. Compound angle cuts can be made with power or hand-operated saws, and require careful calibration or the use of clamps, fences, and jigs.
In joinery and woodworking, a compound angle is formed by cutting a piece of wood at an angle to the horizontal and vertical plane. A simple bevel cut is made at a specific angle to the edge of the workpiece, with the cutting blade itself plunging into the workpiece at a 90 degree angle. In other words, the blade itself remains perpendicular to the surface of the wood, while making a cut between 0 and 90 degrees to the edge of the piece. The new edge exposed by the cut is called a bevel. When the cut was designed to produce a bevel angle other than 90 degrees to the surface of the wood, the cut is a compound angle.
Compound corners are important components of many different structures, including such diverse things as buildings, crown moldings, and picture frames. Many rooms, boxes, and frames are uneven—that is, walls or sides don’t meet at 90-degree angles—and to ensure tight-fitting joints, the ability to reliably cut precise compound joints is essential. Furniture and other accessories, such as tapered displays and planters, also rely heavily on compound angles in their construction. Also, anything built with more than four sides, or fewer, will generally require compound corners at some point in its construction.
Cutting a compound angle is best done with a power or hand-operated composite miter saw, although many carpenters and joiners can produce accurate compound angles in dimension lumber with table saws. Compound angle cuts in larger pieces may require the use of a hand powered circular saw. A power miter saw, also called a miter saw, uses a circular saw blade that, as it rotates at a high speed, is plunged into the workpiece. A hand miter saw incorporates a specially designed guide to secure the workpiece with a guide for a backsaw, a hand saw made specifically for miter saw cutting. The back saw guide is set to both miter and bevel angle and fixed. Specially designed miter boxes made of wood or plastic are also available, with pre-cut slots corresponding to some popular miter angles such as 15, 22.5, 30 and 45 degrees, as well as 90 degrees, but can rarely be used to produce a compound angle with any accuracy.
When using a compound miter saw, cutting an accurate compound angle is simply a matter of carefully calibrating the bevel and bevel angle settings when those angles are known; if not, formulas are available to calculate those angles. Cutting precise compound angles with a table saw or hand circular saw will require the use of clamps, fences and jigs. These accessories are set based on the use of fairly complex compound angular formulas.
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