Creating tight miter joints on inside corners while doing base shoe or quarter round trim work is never easy, particularly in an old house, as corners are rarely actually 90 degrees. So cutting your miters at 45 degrees can lead to a corner with a gap. Sure it may just be a small gap, and it’s just the corner – but it’s a corner you could be looking at every day for the next 20 years. Do you really want to constantly look at that gap or the ugly caulk you used to fit the gap? And do you really want to have to measure and adjust your miter saw for each corner? Why not use a better method and get better inside corners?

How I cut my inside corners.

The basics of my method are nothing new, instead of doing a miter joint I cut the first piece of base shoe square to the wall and then I cut the profile of the molding into the second piece using a coping saw. To make cutting the profile easier you can trace it onto the front of the piece your cutting as in the images below. Though after cutting a few pieces you should have the general concept of the cut needed.

Unless you’re a pro with a really good saw blade your cuts will probably end up a little jagged and probably also won’t fit very well. So you could go and try to refine it with the saw or maybe even pull out a round file or rasp in order to try to smooth it out, but that’s not the easiest solution by any means. This is where I like to turn to my oscillating spindle sander with a 3/4″ drum for base shoe or a 1″ drum for quarter round. If you don’t happen to have an oscillating spindle sander you could also use a drill press with a drum sanding attachment.

Using a 3/4″ drum to sand the base shoe gives you the exact radius needed for the profile cut so that the two pieces of base shoe fit snugly together with no gap. I like to first sand my base shoe at 90 degrees by holding the piece flat to the sander’s surface. Once I have the profile perfect I then lift the front of the piece to emulate a back cut. This secondary sanding step allows for a little play in case the corner isn’t a perfect 90 degrees.

This drum sanding method not only provides a super tight inside corner, it also saves time. The cutting and sanding should take less than two minutes per corner, and you shouldn’t need to waste any time with caulk to fill in those unsightly gaps.

So there you have it, my method for better inside corners when doing base shoe or quarter round trim work. I’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions on this method, or your experience with trying it. Leave me a message in the comments section below.

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