First picture frames

[Cochese]

Wife asked for a picture of the kids for MD, so I decided to make a frame for it. Went so well I made another for my mom. Didn't have enough time to do one for my MIL. We'll see if I can make one tomorrow, but these two wore me out.

One for mom is plain poplar with an ogee on the inside, round over on the outside. Ready for paint or leave as is.

One for wifey is my first experience with jatoba, it's done with this huge Milwuakee raised panel bit I've had forever and never had the opportunity to try out. Stalled that one quite a few times. Two coats of Shellac.

Zero plans for these, just imagination which almost never works out for me. Really impressed with how dead on my miter saw is, and how well my Stone Mountain bits cut. Bought a couple of HF corner clamps and they work well.

Great learning experience for me, and I think I know what Christmas gifts I'll be making this year.

[big tim]

Looks good! Nice tight miters.
Did you use anything to re-enforce the miter joints?
I just finished a frame for a painting one of my daughters painted and I used biscuits to re enforce the joint.

Tim

[Pappy]

I will repeat what Tim said. Nice tight joints of the corners.

I like to add a spline, often in a contrasting wood, to the corners. I also cut a keyhole slot on the top for hanging. Keeps the frame flat against the wall.

If you plan to make very many frames, invest in a Merle clamp from MLCS. Makes glue up a lot easier and faster.

[greenacres2]

I made my first one last week too, for LOML. Picked up a few pieces of hickory wainscoat base at the moulding outlet (Fara Trim/House of Fara is in our town, so it's the one thing we can get without mail order!!). It was 3" wide with a 3/4" rabbet, so i trimmed the rabbet side down to 1/4", then ripped the total width to 2". Miters are not so tight as Cochese, but they will hold. Surface and outer rim rubbed with a light coat of Danish Oil.

Tried working with the Bessey corner clamps--not friendly on the hard stock. Set it aside for a day, picked up a Merle clamp (Pappy mentioned that in the thread where i reported my deal on the Besseys)--the Man is absolutely right. Thanks to Pappy, i returned to acceptable language in short order!!

The one for her birthday (in a week) is a piece of wormy hickory--got the 8' x 3" piece for $2 because "nobody would ever buy that"--i love the old gal in the moulding outlet!!

earl

[Cochese]

Thanks for the kind words. Earl, your picture frame looks great.

They say the true mark of a craftsman is not not making mistakes, but learning how to hide them. I'm getting better at that. I went into this with no plan whatsoever, just trying to make something work. Now that I have more time I'll share my process to try and pick up some tips to make it less time consuming (each one took about three hours, I'd like to cut that down).

After buying glass and matte kits at Michaels, I went up to the lumber yard and saw that they had wormy maple for $3.95/bf or jatoba for $5. I decided the jatoba might finish easier so I selected a nice flat piece. I went to run it through my jointer, but made the mistake of assuming that it was still set up properly. Oops. After running it through a few more times I still had a nice, large bit of snipe so I cut my losses and ran it through the saw to about a 1.75^2 stick consistency.

After struggling with the tight confines of my shop (and the foot depth worth of shavings), I wheeled the router table outside and finished up the raised panel profile on the jatoba frame. I couldn't find the starter pin for my router plate, so I used a bolt. Took a bunch of passes and stalled the router a few times. May have unnecessarily shortened the life of the router, I should really buy a 3HP for table use. Since the bit was up above the table and I couldn't lower it enough to trim the waste, it went through the table saw again to take care of it.

The second frame was done with a poplar board I was saving for chair construction. It got used because the maple I had bowed unfortunately and I didn't have time to joint it. Ripped it into a slightly smaller stock and did an ogee on the inside, a roundover on the outside. Thought it might look weird but it worked.

I was going to use the cutoff method of gluing the corners together, but I didn't feel comfortable doing that so I bought two corner clamps from HF for $10 a piece. Really good investment on my part. This Hitachi miter saw has pretty dead-on 45º from what I can tell. The corners on the poplar frame (the second one) are perfect, the jatoba a little less so. I don't know if that's due to my clamping or that there was a little bit of tear out. Some glue and dust filled in the one odd corner nicely. Had a couple of little nibbles along the face where the bearing had a hiccup or the piece had an indention and you can see the faintest of circles. Oh well. Both were hit with 120 then 220 grit and then two coats of Shellac went on the jatoba frame. 220 between coats.

I'm not a huge fan of Shellac, how it dries. Or I'm doing it wrong.

[greenacres2]

Well--you just made up my mind!!

Local (somewhat--25 miles or so) place has wormy maple at $1.34 to $1.94 (grade and thickness) for 100+ bf ($1.74 to $2.72 for small orders). Been tinkering with the idea of building night stands--got an aspen log bed with some worminess in it and for the money i'm thinking maple will be a nice touch.

earl