What angle do you cut 38° crown molding at?
Cut flat on the table, 38° crown in a square corner is 31.6° miter and 33.9° bevel. Nested against the fence it is a single 45° miter. Settings for every corner.
Miter 31.6°, bevel 33.9° — cutting 38° crown flat on the saw table in a square corner.
Cutting it nested instead — held upside down against the fence at its spring angle, blade straight up — it is a single miter of 45.0° and no bevel at all.
How that is worked out
- Crown leans out from the wall, so its face is in neither the horizontal nor the vertical plane. Cut flat on the table, the saw has to tilt *and* swing to put the blade in the plane of the joint — hence two settings.
- Both settings follow from two angles: the spring angle the molding sits at, and the angle the walls actually meet at. Nothing about the profile matters.
- Nested is the other way to do it: hold the molding at its spring angle against the fence, so the saw only has to swing. One setting, half the arithmetic, and a harder piece of wood to hold steady.
Flat-on-the-table settings, inside corners
| Spring angle | 90° corner — miter / bevel | 120° corner — miter / bevel | 135° corner — miter / bevel | Nested miter (90°) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 38° | 31.6° / 33.9° | 19.6° / 23.2° | 14.3° / 17.6° | 45.0° |
| 45° | 35.3° / 30.0° | 22.2° / 20.7° | 16.3° / 15.7° | 45.0° |
| 52° | 38.2° / 25.8° | 24.5° / 17.9° | 18.1° / 13.6° | 45.0° |
Worth knowing
- Check the spring angle before you trust any of this. Stand an offcut in the corner the way it will sit, measure the drop down the wall and the reach across the ceiling, and work back from those — 38° and 52° are the two common ones and the profile does not tell you which you have.
- Almost no corner in a real house is 90°. Measure the actual corner angle and use that row, or cut a test pair from offcuts and adjust. A degree out shows as a gap you can see from the doorway.
- An outside corner uses the same settings with the miter swung the other way. The piece that runs long is the one on the wall you see first.
- Coping beats mitering on an inside corner in a house that moves. A coped joint closes up as the wall shifts; a mitered one opens.
Work out your own numbers
- Crown molding angles
The miter and bevel for any corner and any spring angle, plus the single setting for cutting it nested.
- Miter angle calculator
The miter for baseboard, casing or chair rail at any corner angle — flat trim, so there's no bevel to set.
Related questions
- What is the difference between 38 and 45 degree crown?
- The spring angle — how far the molding leans out from the wall. 38° crown (sold as 38/52) drops further down the wall than it reaches across the ceiling; 45° sits symmetrically in the corner, dropping and reaching the same amount. They need different saw settings, which is why the first thing to establish with a piece of crown is which one you have.
- What saw settings for 38 degree crown in a 90 degree corner?
- 31.6° miter and 33.9° bevel, cut flat on the table. Both scales move. If your saw will not hold a bevel, cut it nested against the fence instead: that is a single 45° miter with the blade vertical, and it is the same joint.
- Why does my crown joint have a gap at the top?
- Almost always because the corner is not 90°, or because the molding was not held at a consistent spring angle while you cut it. Measure the real corner angle and use that. If you are cutting nested, a stop block that holds the spring angle the same way every time fixes more gaps than any amount of recalculating.