Coping

Coping may refer to:

Coping (joinery)

Coping or scribing is the woodworking technique of shaping the end of a moulding or frame component to neatly fit the contours of an abutting member. Joining tubular members in metalworking is also referred to as a cope, or sometimes a "fish mouth joint" or saddle joint.

Most English speaking countries outside the United States use the terms scribe and scribing.

Coping is commonly used in the fitting of skirting and other mouldings in a room. It allows for clean joints between intersecting members when walls are not square to each other. The other method of fitting these mouldings that is commonly used is the mitre joint but this technique relies upon knowing the precise angle between the walls for neat results. Coping is only ever used for internal corners. External corners are always mitred.

The main reason that scribed joints are used is that timber shrinks in width far more than it does in length. By using a scribed joint rather than an internal mitre joint the effect of shrinkage is minimised. Also it is possible to arrange the scribed joints pointing away from the most common viewpoint (usually the doorway of a room) and so present the best appearance.

Coping (architecture)

Coping (from cope, Latin capa), consists of the capping or covering of a wall.

A splayed or wedge coping slopes in a single direction; a saddle coping slopes to either side of a central high point.

A coping may consist of stone (capstone), brick, tile, slate, metal, wood or thatch. In all cases it should be weathered to throw off the water.

Various types of copings exist. A diagramatic explanation of copper copings is available.

In Romanesque work copings appeared plain and flat, and projected over the wall with a throating to form a drip. In later work a steep slope was given to the weathering (mainly on the outer side), and began at the top with an astragal; in the Decorated style there were two or three sets off; and in the later Perpendicular Period these assumed a wavy section, and the coping mouldings continued round the sides, as well as at top and bottom, mitreing at the angles, as in many of the colleges at Oxford.

References

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.