SammyBar wrote:

Hi all,

Yesterday I tried to put the new melamine countertop (Kober) to my kitchen
with awful results: I should buy a new one and redo everything. The
principal problem was to cut the 45degree to make the two pieces to meet
in the vertice of the "L" I could not make the two pieces to join in an
acceptable (not only for my wife but for myself) way. After recutting and
strightening both angled cuts some times I ended with one of the pieces
shorter than planned for more than 2 inches, but the worse of all was that
the length of the two cuts were different. I mean when you try to align
the two pieces in the "L" vertex, if you make the front of the counter to
match, then the back of one of the pieces was longer by a half inch than
the other piece. My answer is the angle is not 45 degree exactly. One of
the pieces have an angle greather than the other. Even I make both to get
aligned, the difference in angle makes one of the cuts to be longer than
the other. To make the things worse (or better?) I make an error cutting
the sink so I should throw away one of the pieces. Then I'm facing the
same problem for the next weekend: How to cut a perfect 45 angle for the
countertop? The available tools a a circular saw, a jigsaw, a small 1hp
router, a miter saw. I marked the 45 degree by using a scholar rule (such
that have the shape of a rectangle triangle, sorry, I don't know how to
spell this in english) Then I fixed a fence to the bottom side of the
counter and make the first cut with the circular saw. There where many
problems: The bottom side of the counter is not flat. It has a
protuberance at the leading edge. Other problem is the trailing edge that
forms the back of thr counter is too high to be cutted by the circular saw
so I should finish the cut with a hand saw. Other problem I identify is
that after make the angled cut I made the other side cuts (I mean the
stright angle cuts) on the other extreme of the pieces. I wanted to test
the angled cuts by putting the pieces right over the base cabinets, and to
do that I needed to size both pieces to fit into the kitchen. It was an
error: The angled cuts were not good enought to fit on the first shoot, so
I needed to recut and restright resulting in shortening the length of both
pieces. My plan for the next attempt is to make a replica of the angled
walls of the kitchen. Then first cut the 45 degrees angles and redo that
cut up to fit. Then after that cut both pieces to the right length. To cut
the 45 degrees may be I use the mitter saw. Just to be able to cut the
extra height of the counter back, and to mark the right angle for cutting
the rest with the circular saw or by using first the jigsaw and strighten
after that with the router. Other ideas?

Any suggestion for well doing this job is welcomed.
Thanks for your patience for reading this looooooong post
Sammy

Can you cut both parts at the same time? I needed to do similar with
plywood (I did my countertop different, will get to that in a bit). I laid
one sheet on one side, then the other on top of the first then clamped them
together, carefully slid them out together after making a few marks to
check that they didn't move, then marked one line and cut both at the same
time, that way the cuts lined up together.
For my countertop I used the laminate sheets you glue down yourself. I had
an L shaped section so I placed two thin sheets of material down, one long
and one short, then a second layer on top of that with the long sheet on
top of the shorter one and the shorter one on top of the longer one so they
interlocked, then glued the laminate down and patched it together at the
tink so there was only a short joint in front of and behind the sink.