Making Picture Frames, Part 3: Shaping, Gluing and Finishing

With the rabbets complete, the next step was to miter the corners.  The parts were laid out to get a pleasing look to the grain and miters were marked.

Rough marking of the miters

After sawing the 45's, the shooting board made quick work of cleaning them up.  I had sharpened up the #6 that I use solely as a shooting plane and the cherry cut easily.

Shooting the miter

But I found out that my miter shooting fence is not perfectly 45°.  Adding two thicknesses of paper to the end of the fence furthest from the plane gave me a perfect miter.

Paper shims wrap over the top edge of the fence

I mitered corners #1 and #3 (numbered clockwise) so that both shorter parts and both longer parts had one end mitered.  Then the other end was rough mitered close to proper length and finished on the shooting board.  The long members were made to be exactly the same length as each other, as were the short members.

For shaping, a large chamfer was formed on the inside edges.  The chamfer was 3/4" wide and 3/8" deep.  A marking gauge line would still be seen after the chamfer is cut, so to mark the guide lines I used the Incra 6" marking template and a 1/2 mm mechanical pencil.  I don't use this template a lot, but it is fantastic and comes in really handy at times.

Marking the 3/4" width of the chamfer

Chamfer area marked

Added extra pencil lines to know better when to stop planing

Removed most of the waste with a scrub plane, then finished up with a #4 1/2 smoother.

Getting close to the lines

Showing how the part was held in the vise

I made an effort to plane each piece just to the line.  If I planed a little more on one part than another, they would not mate well when forming the mitered corner.  Later on before gluing up, I took a couple shavings off some parts to get this right.

For the outside edge of each piece, a 3/16" bead was cut using the Lee Valley grooving plane and beading iron.

Beading the outer edge

This gave a nice looking profile

When it came time to glue up, I rehearsed on a practice frame I had made from a Doug Fir 2x4.

Rehearsing on the prototype

I made eight 45° clamping blocks that each get clamped to the frame member, enabling me to clamp at right angles to the miter.

Clamping blocks: 3/16" plywood with 45° block glued on and sandpaper adhered to bottom

You can see how these blocks are used

The ruler shows the direction of clamping force - directly perpendicular to the mitered faces

The glue-up went OK, though not perfect.  Still, I'm pretty happy about it.  Both frames glued up squarely, evidenced by a check of the diagonals.

When the glue had dried sufficiently, splines were glued into the corners to shore them up.  I used my widest kerf backsaw to cut the slots so it would be easier to make the splines.

This is a bad saw, but came in handy for a ~0.050" kerf

The practice on the prototype frame want well.  And I learned how best to fine tune the spline material.  After cutting thin pieces, I tried thinning them with a plane upside down in a vise.

Dangerous and didn't work that well

What worked perfectly was to plane them on the bench using a bench dog (raised only a mm or so) as a stop.  And I was also able to plane one side thinner than the other to get it in the kerf more easily.

Planing the splines

I used the splines to mark the frame corner, to make sure I didn't cut too deeply for the splines.

Marked the bottom, then squared the line to the two sides

Sawed the kerfs at a slight angle

Glued in the splines

Cut away the bulk of the waste with a knife, and planed flush later

After some sanding, it was finally time for finishing.  My previous mix of shellac was fairly old, so I started a new (half size) batch a day earlier in preparation for finishing.

Shellac dissolving in alcohol

I applied three coats of shellac, sanding after each had dried.  After letting them sit overnight, I then waxed the frames.

On the drying "racks"

All done

Here's a typical corner.  Happy about how they came out.

My neighbor, who is the artist that I commissioned to do the paintings, also got the matting and glass fitted to the frames.  He also attached the little tooth-like hangers to the upper frame members.  Today he helped me mount these on the wall while my wife was out.  The timing was perfect.

The final product

The wife was totally surprised and loves them.  She grew up around Big Sur, so these paintings have a lot of meaning for her.

Now it's time for a little R&R.  We're leaving tomorrow morning for Valley of Fire (just east of Las Vegas) and Death Valley, where it's going to be in the mid 90's.  Yowzah!