If you love to potter around in your garage on a weekend as you tackle various hobby projects, you'll want to make sure that you have the best tools and equipment for the job. You may not aspire to be a professional in terms of your work by any means, but you're proud of what you can achieve and will want to make sure that each project lives up to your aspiration. You may like to work with wood and be working on a particularly complex job right now that requires you to fit many pieces of wood together with high degrees of accuracy. As this has very little margin for error, you may have already wasted quite a lot of wood simply because you cannot cut them closely enough. While you may have a well-stocked garage, it sounds as if you are missing one particular tool and should invest in a mitre box. What is this and how is it used?

Perfect Tool

A mitre box is a very specific tool that allows you to cut wood with high degrees of accuracy. It's perfect if you were trying to join two pieces of wood together at a certain angle, but each surface may have been inconsistent. Some people try to draw a straight line with a ruler and adhere to that marking, but it's very difficult to achieve a clean end result by doing this. It's much better to get a purpose-made mitre box instead, as this will make your work a breeze.

How It Works

The box itself is typically made from PVC or hardened plastic and designed to clamp or attach to your workstation. There are two 'walls' on opposite sides of the box, and each one of these is equipped with slots that are set at 22.5°, 45° and 90°.

On the bottom of the box are small holes, designed to take two, plastic cam pins. These cam pins are inserted into the relevant holes so that they will secure the wood against the side wall of the box and hold it.

Once ready, the saw can be inserted into one of those slots at the required angle and the wood can be cut to achieve the perfect end result.

Note that you can get a more expensive mitre box that will allow you to set any angle that you want, should you need to cut your wood to a more specific design.

Simplification

Once you have used a mitre box for the first time, you will wonder why you ever struggled before. Buy one of these as soon as possible and your weekends in the garage will be a lot more pleasant.