I feel compelled to relate a story from the holidays.

I went to visit my brother-in-law. I offered to put up some moulding
for him. I figured I'd just borrow my other brother-in-law's compound
miter saw. Oops! He said it got stolen. Bummer. Okay, I'll go rent
one. The blade on the one at the local shop looked terrible. Too
expensive to buy a blade. My brother-in-law offered a yellow PLASTIC
miter box that comes with a saw made by BUCK BROS. I figure that will
never work, so I go search the wreck. "You need a compound miter
saw." "You need a Lion Miter Trimmer." "At the very least, you need
a Nobex miter saw." "The Craftsman hand miter box isn't too bad."
All of these options are expensive enough that I can't imagine buying
the tool just for 8 cuts.

Okay, so I ask my BIL if we can paint the moulding. That way, if
there are gaps in the corners, I can fill them with caulk. Nope. He
wants to stain it. This is going to be a disaster.

It gets down to the wire and I try the yellow plastic miter box. I
cut and measured carefully, doing the best I could. I hammered
carefully to not dent the moulding. (No pnuematic nailer, of course.)

In the end, it all turned out great. The joints were tight and
everybody said it looked great.

The moral to the story: Take the wreck with a grain of salt. All
this talk of "only cry once" and "crapsman" makes it sound like you
can't do ANYTHING without the most expensive tools. Just work
carefully and be innovative. If you can't easily cut dados, then
don't use dados. Maybe you can use splines instead.

(Now if I could just pay attention to this story myself...)

Mark