Simple Rustic Frame for Needlepoint Art

For a few years now, my wife has wanted a frame made from very old, weathered wood for a picture or other art.  When she first asked, I went out and bought two pieces of what I can only guess were old fence boards that were thinned to 1/2" and sold for great profit (they were junk, destined for landfill, when someone caught on to the craze for weathered wood).

The wood was so weathered that it was coming apart at the ends.  So I stabilized the wood by using some 1x4 pine, thinned to about 1/4" and glued to the back of the weathered wood.

The wood for the project

The weathered wood was just shy of 3" wide and the pine was made 1/2" narrower so that when glued on it created a 1/2" rabbet.  I needed the rabbet to be deeper, so I got to use a woodie rabbet plane to deepen it.

This old D.R. Barton skew rabbet plane works very well

One might notice that the backer pine board in the above picture is much longer than the weathered board.  This is how I'm joining the parts together.  It will look like a butt joint from the front, but the extended length of the backer on the rails will be glued to the undersides of the stiles.

Here's how it will look

This pic shows how the horizontal backer extends to the edge of the stile.
The glue joint between the rail's backer and the stile is how the frame stays together. 

The backer pieces were beveled so that they won't be seen as easily

Et voila!  A simple little project.  All that's left is for the wife to get a piece of mat-board to mount the needlework art on.  Then I'll use glazier's points to keep the art in the frame and then mount it on the wall.