At my wits end.....
 

I have a slight problem. I am trying to cut chair molding to go around the ceiling in my living room. Sounds easy enough. Unfortunately I have a vaulted ceiling so the cuts have to be both 45 degrees and 20 degrees to match up with the ceiling. The problem is when I make the 20 degree cut it never matches up with the straight cut piece at 90 degrees. Is this cut even possible or should I just give up and sell the house??? Any help would be greatly appretiated. Thank you.

This has been discussed recently. A quick search will bring up the thread, in the meantime here is a link http://www.garymkatz.com/TrimTechniq...ansitions.html

That link is all well and good but I am not using crown molding. I am using chair rail that sits flat against the wall.

You are missing the essence of the article. In order to transition from level to rake using the same profile a transition piece is needed. The transition can be made without a transition piece, however the rake molding will need to be a different size than the level molding. The amount of the change in size is determined by the angle of the rise. Here is a link which may explain it more fully http://www.thisiscarpentry.com/2010/...board-returns/

two angles will never join up to meet properly unless they are equal, but there's no way to do that around a corner like that without a transition piece as posted above.

You don't cut them at 2 different angles. You cut them both at the same angle.
Ron

Are you nailing the chair molding flat to the wall? If so it's not like crown molding you would cut both pieces at 10°.

I just had total knee replacement surgery last week, but I'm feeling more pain from some of these threads than I am from my knee!
Its a compound cut, the moulding is sitting flat, you can't divvy up the 20* to make them two 10's. You have to transition them as was originally suggested.
Are we getting too anal with our answers lately?