Thanks Dan, that was lot of help.
Regards,
John

On Sun, 15 Jun 2008 21:49:57 -0700, "Dan Coby"
wrote:

"John" wrote in message
.. .
Hi,
I am working on a project that requires a triangle to be made. I
didn't do that well in algebra. I've attached a picture showing the
angles of the triangle. If I remembered correctly, that all three
sides add up to be 180 degrees. So, with the bottom being 50, that
makes each top to be 65 degrees. I want to miter each corner and
wouldn't you just divide 65 and 50 in half, making them 32.5 and 25
degrees?
Thanks,
John

Yes and no.

The yes part:

Yes, your math is correct. Yes, given the 65 degree angles at the top,
the bottom angle should be 50. Yes, you want to create miter angles
on your boards that are 32.5 and 25 degrees.

And now for the no part:

You want your miter angles to be 32.5 and 25 degrees from the side
of your board. From this point of view, a cut perpendicular to the side
of the board is 90 degrees. However the typical miter gauge indicates
0 degrees for a cut perpendicular to the side of the piece being cut.
Thus to get the angles that you want, you need to set your miter gauge
to 90 - 32.5 = 57.5 and 90 - 25 = 65 degrees.

And now for the extra complication:

My miter gauge only goes to 60 degrees. Thus I cannot set it to the
65 degree value needed for the miter cuts for the bottom or your triangle.
To get the 65 degree cut, I would probably cut a piece of scrap to 45
degrees, fasten the scrap to the gauge, and then set the gauge to 20 degrees.
The edge of the scrap would then be at 65 degrees.