Coping a molding such as a chair rail, crown or baseboard takes time, talent and tenacity.
Its not something that can be mastered overnight but with a little patience and practice you can be coping like a pro.
First of all, why cope at all? Why not miter your joints? Mitering is great if all of your corners are square.
If not, you either have to play with your miter or live with the big gaps.
Sometimes compound mitering is required to get a tight joint.
Playing with your miter, in my opinion, is often much more time consuming than coping.
It requires you make numerous cuts to find the right angle so your molding sits flush against the wall and tight in the corner.
Now you will always need to do some playing on the outside corners because there is no coping for out side corners but you still cut your time in half by coping inside corners.
Again this is most true in old houses where the walls are not square anymore.
With coping you can put the inside corner together at almost any angle and have a nice tight joint.
The first thing you need to cope is a good coping saw.
This saw is shaped like a big "D" with a handle on it.
The blade is very thin and can be turned on a very tight corner when needed.
Learning how to use a coping saw is not hard.
It does take patience.
Using pieces of scrap molding you can practice a few times before beginning your installation.
Begin by installing a piece of molding butting the ends against the walls.
This is the piece you are going to cope to.
Next take your molding and, before cutting it to length, cope the end that will be put up against the installed molding.
Cope it in this way.
First, cut a miter on the end to be butt to the other molding.
Now, if you look at the cut you can see the profile of the molding.
Take a pencil if you want and rub it on the profile to make it stick out better.
Take your coping saw and start cutting on the profile line but with the saw angled in the reverse direction to the angle of the miter.
Follow the profile as closely as you can.
The more you practice the better you will get.
After you finished the cut take a piece of sand paper and gently clean up the edge being careful not to distort the profile.
Now your cope is complete.
You can take your piece, put it in place and measure your cut.
The other end will be butt up to the wall and the next piece will be coped to it.
Coping is really that simple.
It can take a lot less time to cope than to experiment with miter angles to find the best miter.
The more you practice your coping skills the better you will become at coping.
Have fun with your new found skill.