Rebate Architrave

Had a chill day walking around the canal path in London, at 6:30 pm, I was keen to continue on the home office project.

The existing wall is not plumb, so when I put the architrave, there’s a gap. This is a typical issue, and a small gap (less than 3mm) can be filled with deco chalk. In my case, the bottom has a 10mm gap, which I have to address.

10mm gap at the bottom between the architrave and the wall

In general, there are two ways: either add a small piece to the door lining to fill the gap, or rebate the architrave to accommodate the wall protrusion. I jumped to the rebate approach as I didn’t have any additional strips of wood for the first approach (happy skip days).

A quick measurement told me the architrave needs a rebate of 45mm wide, and the depth varies: starting from 1300mm height, reaching to 10mm deep at the bottom.

The easiest way to do this in this scenario is to cut 10mm deep across the board, as it is okay to have some voids behind the architrave, and there are still 25mm for the architrave to be fixed on.

My first attempt was using a track saw: first cut was at 45mm line, from the bottom all the way to the 1300mm mark. The next cut is right next to the previous cut to increase the rebate area. Repeating this process many times to get to the whole 45mm area. The groove in the photos below is made from 3-4 passes.

With a blade kerf of size 1.8mm, I figured it requires 25 cuts to get to 45mm. My efficiency-seeking brain took over and said: There must be a better way.

So I pulled out the Dewalt router from the drawer, set the depth, and clamped the architrave down to the table. The immediate problem I faced was that it didn’t cut in a straight line: it went like 45-60 degrees for some reason, so I couldn’t cut a long groove like I had done with a track saw.

Rebate using a track saw and a router

So I turned the router 90 degree and cut small and short chunks instead. It worked well: the grooves I cut using a track saw serve as a stopping line so I won’t cut extra. It was not perfect because there were tons of dust coming out from the router, and it made so much noise.

I put my headphones on and made a few more passes. I started seeing how it can be done for the whole 1300m length. Then I saw my neighbour over the fence, asking what I was doing. Well, it turned out to be 7:30 pm already, so I had to stop and leave it for tomorrow.

In hindsight, the track saw can do a much better job because I realised only 5-10 passes would be enough. The small pieces between grooves can be knocked off rather easily using a chisel. The track saw has better dust collection, and the noise is much lower.

Another completely different approach is to remove the protrusion on the wall using a multi-tool: placing the blade on the door lining so the cuts will be flush with the door lining, and pre-cutting the 45mm line to have a neat finish.