LESLIE: Dana in Iowa, you’ve got The Money Pit. How can we help you today?
DANA: Well, I have a shelf that needs to be cut down so it’ll fit in the base of our A-frame cabin that we just bought in the Ozarks. And so it’s about 20 inches tall and it’s about 3 feet long and it kind of has those baskets that fit in it. And so, what I’d like to do is I’d like to cut it at an angle so that it fits back in there and it’s not just sticking out into the flooring space.
LESLIE: So, Dana, what you need to do is that – I mean really what you have to do is sort of resize this piece so that it will fit into that open-bay portion so that it’s not, as you say, sticking out into the room. And you really need to be creative with the angles to sort of figure out what needs to come out of where.
Can you tell me a little bit more about this A-frame and the size of the shelf?
DANA: Well, the A-frame is just a regular A-frame; it goes all the way from the top to the peak, all the way to the ground level. And so I was trying to figure out, how do you figure the angle so that I know what angle to cut this shelf on?
LESLIE: Well, there’s a tool that you’re going to want to get: T-bevel.
TOM: Yep.
LESLIE: And it’s like a plastic handle with this sort of a tic-tac, oval-shaped blade that’s got a slide set in the middle of it.
TOM: Blade. Mm-hmm.
LESLIE: And you’re going to open that up. You can get that at any tool area at the home center.
DANA: OK.
LESLIE: And you’re going to want to open it up and you put that right in the corner at the angle and then lock it in that position. And then you go ahead and put that at your T-square and that’s going to tell you exactly the angle that you need to cut at. Or you can then take that T-bevel and go right up to the bottom of your shelf, put it exactly where you’re going to want to put that cut and mark that line.
DANA: OK.
TOM: Yeah, it’s like an adjustable square and it’s called a T-bevel. And you should be able to find an inexpensive one, like Leslie said, at home center.
LESLIE: Mm-hmm. It really is going to save your day and make this the easiest project.
DANA: Ours …
TOM: I use that all the time for different types of fancy mitering cuts in, too, because there’s a couple of tricks of the trade where you can measure an angle and then divide it so that you can make a miter that ends up perfect on both sides.
And we also use it sometimes to set the angle on saw blades, so I think you’ll find that it’d be a very handy tool for this particular project. OK, Dana?
DANA: Alright. Thank you very much.
TOM: You’re welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
Leave a Reply