Tibby Singh Choda has a look at Trend’s Scribe Master Pro Scribing Jig
Barely a day goes by where carpenters and joiners aren’t required to do a scribe. Whether it’s scribing skirting boards, dado rails or any other mouldings, there are no excuses for leaving any gaps. It’s not the responsibility for another trade, such as the painters and decorators, to cover up your poor workmanship.
However, I can say that it is a tricky task to master, with even the most experienced sometimes struggle to consistently get it right. Although I have many years of experience of scribing by hand, sometimes I still wish I could go a bit quicker, especially when I’ve got hundreds of metres of skirting to fit.
Upon unboxing Trend’s Scribe Master Pro Scribing Jig, I can honestly say my initial thought was that it looked like a complex bit of kit. However, as soon as I looked a little closer, it became pretty obvious what each component of the tool was for. The jig itself comes fully assembled, so you don’t need to waste any time assembling it together.
There are only four simple steps before you’re fitting the skirting to the wall. Firstly, you simply place an off-cut of your material into the set up area. Secondly, you push the combs against the surface of the off-cut using the comb alignment tool to recreate your profile. Once aligned you slightly tighten the knobs and flip the combs over, into the cutting position.
Finally you make that final cut, running the router against the profile. All this just takes a couple of minutes, with the final cutting step taking about 15 seconds of these. This means that once the jig has been set up on one profile, you can create the same scribe over and over again in no time, without leaving any gaps.
You may be thinking: ‘All this sounds good in an ideal world, but I bet it doesn’t work out of square, walls that aren’t plumb, or doing a leading edge or a back cut?’ However, the answer to all of these is YES, it does! The Scribe Master Pro doesn’t see anything as a problem. For example, you could scribe any two different skirting boards together. By hand it would be near enough impossible to scribe a torus skirting into an ovolo skirting.
However, the way this tool is designed and set up, it’s just as easy as scribing any other two pieces together. Another example where it sees no difference is the material that’s being scribed – it’s just another piece of wood. Anyone who’s tried to scribe hardwoods would agree that it’s much harder to cut and scribe, yet it needs to be more accurate if it’s going to be stained.
The jig is constructed from a high pressure laminate, making it very durable yet light. It also has thermal properties that ensure each component slides over each other regardless of it being too hot or too cold. The combs, nuts and bolts are all stainless steel, so they’ll never see a crust of rust. With the use of a ¼in. router bit and a 30mm router guide bush, you can cut boards up to 195mm tall and 32mm thick.
The scribing jig comes with all the necessary accessories such as a 4mm ¼in. shank HSSE spiral router cutter, comb alignment tool and the workpiece clamp knob. There are also other accessories that are available, such as an 8mm HSSE cutter ideal for hardwoods, the unibase, which is a universal sub-base – and means the jig can be used with other router brands and not just Trend ones – and a quick mount kit for mounting on a variety of saw stands.
Another accessory is the tenon slide plate that allows you to create through housing, half lap and tongue and groove lining joints. Last but not least, a hard wearing carry case will serve you well in transporting the Master from site to site.
With that being said, I can honestly say that Trend’s Scribe Master Pro Scribing Jig is an essential piece of kit for any carpenter and joiner. I usually say that quality and quantity hardly pass each other’s path, like the Sun and the Moon. However this total eclipse is one of those beautiful but rare moments that must be appreciated. Trend has yet again crafted a jig that leaves no room for error and makes it up to 10 times faster to provide the perfect scribe.
