Scribing

How to scribe timber to irregular or uneven surfaces

Scribing something like skirting down to the floor is fairly easy, you just need to run a pencil along the floor like above, marking how much needs to be removed. Once you cut off whats marked either with an electric planer or circular saw it drops down tight like this

During all types of carpentry you will need to cut timber, plasterboard or anything else to an irregular shape or out of level/square surface. It's paying attention to detail, the difference between being neat or rough and leaves less work for the decorator.

Plus, because timber shrinks if you don't cut things in so they fit nice and tight now they'll look a whole lot worse after a couple of months when the heatings been on and the inevitable happens, everything will open up.

You can use a carpenters pencil, a piece of scrap wood cut to size or a compass for larger gaps/irregularities. It crops up all over the place, here are some examples of when you might need to fit timber in;

Once you've had to fit a few things to uneven walls etc. you'll soon see how important it is to build things square, level and flat during the framing stages - it saves you loads of time and grief making things fit in the long run.

There are a couple of methods to use depending on how bad the surface is you are working with.

I'll explain a few here with examples, they can all be adapted to suit different scenarios.

How to scribe skirting to the floor

If the gap is too large to do that - say 10mm for example, cut a small piece of scrap wood 10mm thick. Now use the timber as a guide to run the pencil along the floor, marking the skirting. As it moves along and up/down it will mark the shape of the floor 10mm up, and when you cut to this line it should drop down for a perfect fit. To cut the shape use a circular saw, jigsaw or handsaw. Clean it up with a block or smoothing plane and sand the pencil line off before you fix it to the wall.

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