43 VIDEO HOW TO CUT PYRAMID TOPS*

In this video I want to explain to you how to do something that I call a

pyramid top and it's a way of making the ends of posts and sometimes beams look a

whole lot nicer. So this is the mailbox that I built for my place here. I want

you to look at the top here. It's got a pyramid top right there and then there's

also one on the end here. If you look at this next photo this is the end of the

same arm. I've got a different mailbox on here now but you see how the pyramid

cuts come together and make the, in this case, the the horizontal member

horizontal 6x6 look pretty good. So here's how you can you can do this

First of all you need to start by making some angled cuts and that's what's going

on here. The exact angle, you might want to fool around with a little bit

15 degrees from square, 20 degrees from square. That's kind of what looks good

The challenge though is that an ordinary circular saw like this one can't cut

deep enough to make all four cuts come together properly on most timbers

This is a 6x6 that I'm working with now. You could get through on a 4x4 but

that's awfully small. Most of the post and beam work you might do for your deck

or other outdoor projects will be 6x6 and larger and so step one is just to

make four cuts like this. So beforehand I've marked a square line on all four

sides of this beam and that's what I follow as I make this cut. You can see

the cut doesn't go all the way down. So the next step is to continue that those

cuts with a handsaw to get us down past the point where all four cuts intersect

in one point. In this case it's going to be happening inside the beam and when

I've done all these four cuts this is what it looks like. So this top piece, the

scrap piece, just comes off and I can get rid of it and I'm left with the

four facets that I want. Now you can't really tell in the photo here but these

cuts aren't going to be as good as they should be. I mean if you think about it

part of the cut maybe down to here on all four sides of the pyramid that

was done with a circular saw blade and then the rest of the cut was done with

a handsaw and usually what happens is there's a ridge of wood between the

circular saw cut and the handsaw cut and there's saw marks and it just doesn't

look all that great. We're close but we're not quite there yet and that's

where this last step comes in to use an 80 grit belt in a belt sander and then

just to sand each facet in turn. So you're making it smooth and then you're

also sanding them more or less depending on what's necessary to get them to come

together into a nice single point on the top. It's not difficult and the 80 grit

belt is aggressive enough that it cuts quite cleanly and you get a really nice

result ready for construction and finishing and anything else you want to do