Tools I Use to Cut Miters for My Miniatures

There are a number of good ways to cut miters. I use three different tools to cut mine. Each has its advantages.

The first, and simplest way to cut them is to use a miter shear called the Miter Master available from Micro-Mark. This scissors-like shear is extremely sharp and cuts a very precise 45 degree angle in moldings.

Micro-Mark says this tool can cut wood up to 1/2 inch thick by 1-1/2 inches wide. I would never try to cut anything that thick with this shear, but cutting a flat piece of molding? It's awesome!

The next tool I have used extensively in dollhouse miniature making is a miter hand saw. I use the Dobson Miter-Rite from Micro-Mark. With its well-designed, two-screw locking system, you can secure the saw very precisely to the angle you need to cut your wood.

The 45 degree angle marked on the plastic arc on the top is "fairly" accurate, but if you're a perfectionist, don't trust it. You'll want to use a plastic 45 degree angle ruler to set the saw accurately. The stable sleeve that holds the saw blade ensures you will make a virtually straight vertical cut in whatever piece you're mitering.

Finally, my tool of choice for cutting thicker pieces (such as the dentil molding around the ceiling in yesterday's blog), is my modeler's table saw (also purchased from Micro-Mark). It can cut up to an inch thick piece of wood. Again, to get a precise 45 degree angle quickly, use a plastic triangle between the miter gauge and the saw blade to get your angle. (Be sure the saw is turned off before doing this, however!)

Since my workshop is so small, I have my dollhouse on display in my living room, but my workshop is downstairs. So, I frequently get a workout running up and down the stairs to cut wood on my table saw. That's why I've become more comfortable using the Miter Master shear - it's so easy to measure, cut and glue molding - especially window trim. If we had small children in our house, though, I would be very careful in where I left this tool. I shudder to think about how badly a child could get cut on it. (Of course, they could get hurt with my table saw, too, but I can lock my workshop when I'm not in it.)

My thanks to Micro-Mark for permission to use their photographs in today's blog.

Finishing a Ceiling

I thought I'd share briefly about finishing ceilings. This is the dining room of my latest house. I used a combination of things to do it. The ceiling itself is acid-free matte board. (I use acid free materials whenever I can in my work, since I want my grandchildren and maybe even great grandchildren to be able to enjoy my miniatures long after I'm gone.)

With wooden dollhouses, I think matte board is really the easiest way to finish off ceilings. A small piece of molding around the edge helps to hide any imperfections as well as to help hold the matte board in place.

Even though I thought my walls were perfectly straight and all corners were 90 degrees, I checked to make sure using a right angle square. If any corner was not precisely 90 degrees, I would have had to adjust the angle of my miter cuts for that corner. In cases where my ceiling has a cut-out or extends into a smaller nook area, I create a paper model of the ceiling before I ever cut out the matte board. (Saves making mistakes in cutting.) Be SURE you mark which side is up so that when you place the model onto your matte board to draw lines, you have the proper side selected!

I purchased the sconce above the chandelier as well as the ogee and dentil moldings around the edges of the ceiling. (I've tried making my own dentil molding. It's a pain.) However, I did make the octagonal molding that floats around the chandelier sconce. To do that, I cut out straight pieces of wood approximately 1/4" wide and then I used a compass to draw quarter inch wide arcs on the same kind of wood as the straight pieces were cut from. I then cut out the arcs with my table jigsaw.

Next, I used my Dremel tool and one of the Dremel router bits to create the indented and rounded effects of this piece. I routed both edges of each piece. I then used an emery board to smooth out the top of the rounded "bead" to remove any imperfections.

Next, I set my table saw miter gauge at 22.5 degrees. I cut the straight pieces in appropriate lengths so that I had two sets of equal length straight pieces. Then I cut out an arc that filled in the remaining portion of the inner curve of the routed pieces and created a right angle. Holding the curved piece against the arc, I was then able to cut the 22.5 degree angles into the curved sections. The last step of creating this molding was to carefully measure where I wanted the molding to go on the ceiling.

I should mention that I worked on the ceiling outside of the dollhouse. I cut the matte board slightly narrower (about 1/16th inch) than the length and width of the room, so it would go in easily. I then centered the sconce in the middle and glued it into place. With the ceiling flat on the workbench in front of me it was fairly easy to measure and piece together the molding pieces described above. Next I glued the matte board into place. I used a few pieces of thin wood that were about 1/16" taller than the floor to matte board ceiling. I bent these and set them in various spots around the room to help hold the matte board in place while the glue set and dried. (I used at least six boards to hold up the ceiling.) Once the ceiling was firmly in place, I glued in the ogee/dentil moldings.

By the way, I use a capenter's ruler to get precise inside dimensions for the molding. I find it a very helpful tool. Most any hardware that sells tools also sells these rulers. They are eight inches long when folded up. The segments can be twisted 180 degrees to extend out, making the full length of the ruler six feet long when fully extended. Inset into the last piece of the ruler is a sliding brass rule that can be extended. You can insert the folded up ruler into a room, push out the brass extension and get a precise reading of how wide your room is.

It's crucial to get precise measures of the room so that you can cut your molding exactly. If your measurements are too wide, the molding won't fit in the room. If it's too narrow, you'll have ugly gaps in the corner(s) or molding that doesn't go all the way to the wall.

Thank You, Friends!

I have received three blog awards from you, my friendly readers. Thanks to De at De~lightful Minis (twice!) and to MiniMaker at Creating Dollhouse Miniatures for both of you thinking enough of my blog to recognize it.

I'd love to pass along the award, but I'm so green in the blogging arena, I haven't spent enough time snooping around to find a lot of blogs.

I must say, most of the sites I have found have been delightful, and I'm fascinated with what I find. As with all things, though, time is our greatest enemy. I have a full time job and enjoy a full time hobby; if I spend much time on the computer, I'm actually cheating myself on workshop time, and there's still so much to do! I'm working on a fancy, dressed Victorian bed right now, which I'll share with you one of these days soon.

So, to my fellow bloggers and new-found friends, thank you again!

Hand Laid Floors Add Beauty to a Room

These photos illustrate two floors I hand laid for my latest dollhouse. For the floor on the left, I used my table saw to cut three different kinds of wood into small pieces. I used stops on the table top so that each piece would be exactly the same length.


I then took a piece of acid free drawing paper and drew out a grid pattern on it. The lines helped me keep everything in alignment. I dabbed some Weldbond Glue on the bottom of each piece of wood and when I set it down on the paper, I slid it around in a circle in the general area where it would go to even out the glue underneath the piece of wood. Then I pushed it into place and held it momentarily until the glue began to set. I found that I got a more precise pattern if I pushed fairly hard to hold the piece in place. If any extra glue emerged around the sides onto the paper, I immediately scraped it off with a wooden toothpick. If it oozed out from between the pieces of wood, I used a damp tissue to wipe away the excess.


By the way, if you know someone who is diabetic and uses syringes, I've found they are terrific for applying glue - especially if the needles are cut down in length. (If you have small children anywhere around, though, I don't recommend this method.) You can remove the plunger, squeeze a modest amount of glue into the syringe and reinsert the plunger. Don't plan on reusing the syringe. I normally can't reload and do multiple loads of glue in a syringe. The syringe allowed me to squeeze much more precise amounts of glue onto each piece of flooring so that I had far less excess glue to clean up.


Although I had to pay some attention to what I was doing, the process was one that I could do while watching TV. It took me about a week to complete each of these floors. Once they were all glued up, I then took my orbital sander and smoothed them down using some of the finer grades of paper. I finished them using clear stain to bring out the natural colors of the wood, and then I coated them with several coats of Deft varnish. I rubbed the varnish out with some 0000 steel wool and then coated the floors with wood wax. I then buffed down the waxed floor.


By the way, before I began each flooring project, I made a precise model of the room that I intended to floor. I trimmed about 1/16" of wood away from each edge, since I knew I would be adding wooden wainscoting and trim with miniature quarter-round, which would hide all edges of the floor. By cutting it a little shy of full width, it was easier to set the floor down into the room. You can use glue to hold the floor in place or if you think you might have to someday remove the floor to fix some wiring, you can always use double-sided carpet tape to hold it in place. I recommend gluing it down, though; especially if you live in a humid climate.

My First Project

This was the first room box I ever created from scratch. My wife was a fourth grade teacher at the time, and my parents had given her a McGuffey's Eclectic Fourth Reader.

I decided to build a shadow box that held the reader in the top half of the box and created this old fashioned classroom for the lower half of the box.

At the grade school where I attended so many years ago, the walls were all painted with an industrial green paint, similar to what's here. And, yes, I sat in desks fastened in rows to 1 x 4 boards, just like these are in this tiny classroom. We even used the Big Chief tablets for writing in when I was a kid - just like this one I found at a miniature store.

Other than the tablet and the books on the desk, I made everything in the room as well as the cabinet that this is in. If you study the chair in detail, you'll notice that the three spindles in the middle are a bit mismatched. I didn't do that on purpose. It just happened.

I made all of the spindles for the chair using toothpicks for the wood. I "turned" the wood with needle files. Since I didn't have a lathe at that time, I would hold a needle file against the toothpick using my thumb to apply pressure and turned the toothpick around and around with my other hand until I got the approximate "turning" that I wanted. I used the triangular shaped needle files to create sharp lines and the round needle file or the half-round needle file to create more rounded grooves. Depending on where I placed the needle file helped determine how wide the gouge would be. I would then finish the turning with pieces of fine grit sandpaper.

The pencils in the pencil cup were two more toothpicks that I made ever so tiny using the same turning method and an emery board. The apple on the teacher's desk was a wooden bead.

If you look really closely, you'll notice another error I made in building the room. I didn't realize that the wood of my wainscoting would shrink over time. (I made this nearly 30 years ago.) Since it did shrink, there are gaps exposed between the pieces of wood I used for the wainscoting. I wish I had taken a dark felt pen and had colored the wall with a stripe about 1/8" wide behind the area where the wood came together. The shrinkage would have been far less visible as a result.

The truth is, I think most of our best learning occurs from our mistakes, and I made some with this project.

Looking Into The Shop Window

I received a nice note from Brenda that concluded, "I would never dream of having the ability to do what you do..." That makes me feel a little sad when I hear that, because so many folks have the ability, if they have the right tools and/or the right resources. I've just been incredibly lucky in that regard.

Please know this: I got a D in wood shop in the 7th grade! Of course, I wouldn't mind showing that shop teacher a few of my pieces today...

A lot of the stuff I do requires patience, occasionally a steady hand, and a willingness to give new things a try. I'm hopeful that through this blog I can inspire others to try some new things in mini-making. There are always new skills and new approaches to learn. Sometimes the items I work on turn out wonderfully. Other times, well, let's just say the old shop teacher would have smiled and said, "See? I told you so!"

I often talk to myself when I'm working - sometimes out loud and frequently within my head. I coach myself as I go with statements such as: "Careful! Slow down. Steady.... Did you measure that right? Check it again! Looking good. Yes! That's the way to do it." I try to tune out the voice that says, "I could never do that..." Instead, I more often think, "I'd like to try that sometime..." It certainly leaves me with endless projects to do!

All of this said, please understand how much I appreciate your kind comments for this blog. Thank you, Brenda, and thank you also to the many others of you who have left such kind comments!

More Uses for Jeweler's Saws

The sign "GOGANY" and the panels just below the roof line were all cut out using a jeweler's saw. The shop was a miniature club project. We were given the basic box with a front window and sidewalk and room for a front door. What we did with it from there was up to the individuals.

GOGANY stands for George's Oddities, Gimcracks, Antiques and Nicknacks of Yesteryear. In other words, a store full of odds and ends - a great way for me to include "stuff" I've collected or received over the years; although, it hardly made a dent in that collection! The rocking horse in the foreground was my Christmas gift to club members one year. I made a couple extras so that my children would also have one. For the life of me, I don't recall who made the doll. We bought her at a miniature show, and she's a gem!

You may notice that the letters for GOGANY may appear to be rounded on the edges. They are. Once I cut them out with the jeweler's saw, I used one other tool that I most frequently rely on with miniatures - an emery board. I use these tools to sand off any rough edges, smooth any bad cuts and in this case to finish off the letters making them nice and round! I sometimes cut the boards in half lengthwise (or even narrower) as needed to get inside tight areas for sanding purposes.