A miter joint (mitre in
British English
British English is the set of Variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United Kingdom, especially Great Britain. More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadly, to ...
) is a joint made by cutting each of two parts to be joined, across the main surface, usually at a 45° angle, to form a corner, usually to form a 90° angle, though it can comprise any angle greater than 0 degrees. It is called
bevel
A bevelled edge (UK) or beveled edge (US) is an edge of a structure that is not perpendicular to the faces of the piece. The words bevel and chamfer overlap in usage; in general usage, they are often interchanged, while in technical usage, they ...
ing when the angled cut is done on the side, although the resulting joint is still a miter joint.
For woodworking, a disadvantage of a miter joint is its
weakness
Weakness is a symptom of many different medical conditions. The causes are many and can be divided into conditions that have true or perceived muscle weakness. True muscle weakness is a primary symptom of a variety of skeletal muscle diseases, ...
, but it can be strengthened with a spline (a thin wafer of wood inserted into a slot, usually arranged with the
long grain of the spline across the
short grain of the frame timber).
There are two common variations of a splined miter joint, one where the spline is long and runs the length of the mating surfaces and another where the spline is perpendicular to the joined edges.
Common applications include
picture frames,
pipes, and
molding.
Non-perpendicular joints
For miter joints occurring at angles other than 90°, for materials of the same cross-section the proper cut angle must be determined so that the two pieces to be joined meet flush (i.e. one piece's mitered end is not longer than the adjoining piece). To find the cut angle divide the angle at which the two pieces meet by two. Technically, two different cut angles are required; one for each piece, where the second angle is 90° plus the aforementioned cut angle, but due to angular limitations in common cutting implements (hand circular saws, table saws) a single angle is required and is used to cut the first piece in one direction and the second piece in the opposite direction.
See also
*
Mason's miter
*
Miter box
*
Miter clamp
*
Miter saw
A miter saw or mitre saw is a saw used to make accurate crosscuts and miters in a workpiece by positioning a mounted blade onto a board. A miter saw in its earliest form was composed of a back saw in a miter box, but in modern implementation ...
*
Miter square
*
Pipe notching
References
Further reading
*
Adamson, John, "The making of the mitre plane", ''Furniture & Cabinetmaking'', issue 270, May 2018, pp. 44–9
External links
Miter Saw Calculator* Verhoeff, Tom and Koos Verhoeff
PDF"The Mathematics of Mitering and Its Artful Application", ''Bridges Leeuwarden: Mathematical Connections in Art, Music, and Science, Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Bridges Conference'', in The Netherlands, pp. 225–234, July 2008.
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