Bevel Cut vs Miter Cut: What’s the Actual Difference?

Ajouté : 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]I'm gonna need a bevel cut for that. Or was that a miter cut? You know, a lot of woodworkers get confused with these two terms and there's good reason for that.

[00:00:07]There's a lot of similarity, but there's some key differences between them as well.

[00:00:14]Both bevel cuts and miter cuts can be caught on a miter saw or on a table saw.

[00:00:19]It really doesn't matter. Really depends on what you've got to work with. Now, the size of the piece may affect that a little bit. Okay, I'll give you that.

[00:00:26]But basically, both can do both. Okay.

[00:00:29]So what are we talking about when we talk about these? We're talking about the way we cut the wood and the way we join the wood. These are both for joinery obviously. So when we're talking about a miter cut, we're talking about a cut that's made across the face of the wood in such a way that the blade of the saw stays vertical. Okay? Whether I'm cutting this on the miter saw or I'm cutting on the table saw, my blade is staying vertical and I'm angling the material to get the cut. This is very common for picture frames. Whether we're talking little frames or big frames, it really doesn't matter. It's the same joint.

[00:01:08]Okay. In contrast to that, a bevel cut tilts the blade and leaves the material straight so that we get our angle this way. All right. Why would we want to do that? Well, that's ideal for making boxes of whatever sort. And keep in mind, when we're talking bevel cuts and we're talking miter cuts, we're not only talking 90°. Yeah, that's the most common. But if you want a six-sided box, it's still a bevel cut or a or still Yeah, it's still a bevel cut. If you want a six-sided frame, it's still a miter cut. Okay. So, either way, we're dealing with the way the blade is. For the the bevel cut, the blade has to be angled. For the miter cut, the blade is left vertical and the material is turned. All right. Now, what if you want to do both? We don't normally do this in woodworking, but it's somewhat common in construction, and that's to do what's known as a compound cut. Something like this. Now, my angles aren't absolutely right on this. I'll tell you that right now. Mostly because I'm doing this in particle board instead of in crown molding. Because that's really what it's used for is crown molding. When you want that to go around an outside corner, you will cut a compound miter. And that is a bevel and a miter at the same time.

[00:02:22]Okay. Would we ever use that in woodworking? Well, it's possible. It depends on the type of woodworking you're doing. If you're going to do say an early American hutch for a dining room, then around the top of it, you probably have some sort of molding, in which case compound miter. Okay. So yes, there are some places, but it's not very common in woodworking.

[00:02:46]If you want to make a miter cut on a table saw, the standard way of doing that is to use a miter gauge. Now, I've attached a fence to my miter gauge to make it longer. Most miter gauges are only about 6 in wide. A little hard to hold the angle that way. And then you set it to the angle you want. Put your piece of wood up against it and run it through the blade and get a miter cut at least one half of it. Then you got to do the other board. All right. There's a problem with that and that's accuracy. I call it a protractor gauge that's on the the miter gauge. What tells you what how many degrees you got. Really isn't all that accurate. You need to use something more accurate for setting it up. Some sort of a square or other device. And we'll talk about those in just a minute.

[00:03:27]Now, there's another way we can do this as well. Instead of using the miter gauge, let me get this out of the way.

[00:03:33]Doesn't want to move.

[00:03:35]and that's to use what's known as a miter sled. Now, you've probably heard of a a crosscut sled for the table saw. And this is essentially a crosscut sled with a miter. Now, this is a exact 90°.

[00:03:49]And uh it's set on there so that I can place this on my saw and put my pieces in from either side.

[00:04:00]You know, one side of the angle from one side, the other side from the other side. That's really important. And I'll end up with an exact 90 degree miter.

[00:04:08]Now, this is a real benefit over the miter gauge. And that once I've created this and I've made sure it's accurate, then I'll always make sure and know that my my miters will come out to 90°. Let me define accurate in this case. Okay, I know that this angle here is exactly 90°. Okay, easiest way to get that is to cut off a corner of a sheet of plywood. But regardless, okay, this isn't plywood, but cut off a piece and put it on there. Line it up so it's exactly 45°. And there you have it.

[00:04:40]That's what I did, except I didn't use plywood.

[00:04:42]All right. What if I get it a little bit off? That's one of the beauties of this design.

[00:04:47]As long as I've got this being exactly 90°, let's say it's a half a degree off.

[00:04:53]And a half a degree can make a huge difference in miters. Okay? As long as I cut one half of my miter on this side with the wood on this side and the other half with the wood on this side, then when I put the two together, they'll give me exactly 90°. So, I'll always get 90° out of it. All right. So, that's our that's mitering. What about beveling?

[00:05:17]Okay. Now, beveling requires tipping the blade, and that's usually done either with a miter gauge or with a crosscut sled. If you're going to use a crosscut sled for this, I recommend having a separate crosscut sled and you will you use for normal cross cutting. And the reason I say that is because you're going to mess up your your fence on your crosscut sled a little bit. All right, so we set this up.

[00:05:45]We're at 90 degrees and we bevel the blade to give us the bevel. Okay. So now when I run my piece through, instead of cutting this way, I'm cutting this way. Right? And I cut the other piece that way. I put them together and I get my 90°. Again, we have a potential problem with accuracy because if I look at the the protractor gauge here on the front of the saw and I find 45°, unless I've set it up and I've checked it to make sure it's really 45°, it might be just a bit off. And that just a bit off, half a degree, quarter of a degree, will make it so that my all four corners don't match up match up correctly and I don't get the nice clean box that I'm trying to get. warp in the case of a frame. I don't get the nice clean and frame I'm trying to get.

[00:06:40]Okay, so now let's look at doing miters and bevels with a miter saw. As the name implies, miter saws are developed for cutting miters, right? That's going to be a little tricky to do because I don't have this mounted to the bench. These should always be mounted. Okay, I don't This is not its normal home. It's not mounted. Nevertheless, I'm going to try and show you what I'm talking about.

[00:07:00]Now, almost all well, actually all miter saws are going to allow you to cut miters. All right? And what that means is that you can rotate the the carriage here in relation to the base and the fence to give you a miter.

[00:07:17]Now, I can go different degrees of miter. There's 15°, there's 22 1/2, and all the way over here is 45. So now when I put my piece of material in here and I'm trying to cut it, I'm going to get a miter. Okay. Again, we have a problem with accuracy. Don't assume that a miter saw coming out of the factory is going to be perfectly accurate. You really need to take some time to set it up. Make sure the angles are the way they're supposed to be. Okay? And you should check it from time to time. All right? So that's that's our miter. And as I said, all miter saws can do that.

[00:07:56]Now, some some miter saws like this one are sliding miter saws, meaning that the the carriage moves back and forth.

[00:08:05]Okay? And that allows me to do wider material. I can do up to 2x12s on this particular saw.

[00:08:12]But some of them are also tilting or what they call compound miter saws. Now, not all miter saws are compound miter saws. A lot will depend on how much money you spend. There's a knob here on the back. Let's see if I can actually do this with it not mounted, but I should be able to There we go. Tilt the blade and the carriage and the whole thing. And there's one of those protractor gauges back there that I can set my angle.

[00:08:38]Okay. Uh and so I can get either cut a bevel if I'm making boxes or I can do that compound miter for uh if I'm trying to do crown molding.

[00:08:53]Yeah, it's a little stiff. Okay, as I said, not all miter saws have that capability, but all of them will have the miter capability.

[00:09:04]It would seem, at least just looking at it, like bevels and miters should be some of the easiest joints there are to make, but the truth is that they're some of the hardest. Now there are a fairly simple joint but what makes it difficult is the degree of accuracy needed. Take this little sample here. This is just a four miters as small as I could make it with the wood I was using. And there's gaps. Okay. Why are there gaps? Because of inaccuracy. So we set up our saw, whichever saw, and we're trying to cut 45° angles. Well, what happens if we got 44 and a half? Now, it doesn't seem like that half a degree should make a difference, but that half a degree is going to be multiplied twice in that one corner. So, instead of having a 90° corner, we're going to have an 89° corner. Now, we got three more corners, each of which will be off by a degree.

[00:10:00]So, now we got instead of a 90° corner, we got an 86 or maybe a 94 degree angle.

[00:10:06]So, that that's where this inaccuracy comes from.

[00:10:10]The built-in gauges on these saws are not necessarily accurate enough for the type of work we do in woodworking.

[00:10:17]They're really designed more for construction where that degree of accuracy isn't always really necessary.

[00:10:23]And carpenters have a few tricks they use like when they're doing door frames, uh, the casing so that they can hide the fact that their joints are a little bit inaccurate. That don't necessarily work for us. All right. So, what do we do?

[00:10:35]Well, we bring accuracy to the tool. we need to use something more accurate to make our setups. Whether we're making a 90° cut, a 45 degree cut, whatever.

[00:10:44]Okay, the most obvious is a square. All right, if we're trying to set up a 90° cut, every time we bring our blade back to 90°, we should always check it with a square, make sure it really is 90°. Now, both saws should have on them the ability to adjust a zero when you're at 90°. Okay, they do, but they're not set up correctly from the factory or they're probably not set up factory correct from the factory. So, you'll want to do that and you'll want to check it periodically. And then they should have a stop, an adjustable stop at 45° as well. So, you can get those two extremes. And then on a miter saw, you'll usually have indents that are at different degrees, like 15, 30, uh, 22 1/2°. And if you've got the the zero and the 45 good, those will probably be all right as well, but you'll still want to check them. So, your most basic way is a square. Now, I I use a little square like this a lot of times with my table saw to check the blade just because it's a whole lot easier than trying to hold this up there. Okay, it's it's wide. It sits on the the saw fine by itself and it gives me a pretty good check. All right, but that's 90°. What about everything else? Well, there's other possibilities. Okay, gauges like this.

[00:11:57]Okay, this is actually for setting blade height and distance from the fence, but it also gives you a good reference not only for 90°, but this particular set has four different angles. Okay, I've got this particular one says 50°, this one says 45°, that one says 80°. So, I can set my blade angle with something like that. That's a possibility. A lot of people like using one of these digital, a lot of people call them angle finders. It's actually a digital level.

[00:12:26]And uh it's magnetic so you can zero it on your table and then mag connect it magnetically to the side of your blade and adjust the tilt on your blade and it'll give you a pretty accurate reading. Now keep in mind that these digital things which although they'll give you a really accurate reading, there is some inherent inaccuracy in the tool itself. Okay? So you want to check yours out against something that's a known good reference to make sure it's good. So this is but nevertheless this is really good for setting that that blade angle for doing those bevel cuts.

[00:12:59]And I I do use it for that on both saws or uh an angle finder like this which will allow you to set for those miters on the on the table saw or the miters on the miter saw. You can set this say on on the table saw you can set it against your your blade and your miter gauge and you can set whatever angle. Again, you've got the possibility of some inaccuracy just like you do with this one. Okay, these digital products, they'll tell you they'll give you an accuracy down to something like 2/10 of a percent. And that's pretty darn good, but check it check it against a known good square. Okay? If it's good at zero and it's good at 90°, it's going to be good everywhere. So, that's what you want to make sure of. So, it's worth investing in some of these types of tools, and they really aren't all that expensive, but that investment will give you the ability to make sure that you're setting up your angles correctly for your miters and your bevels so that you get the best possible joints without any gaps.