Picture Frames
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Making a picture frame is a nice small scale project that allows you to showcase your talents while framing a beautiful picture.
There are a variety of different techniques to build a picture frame, from using off the shelf molding to milling your own molding. The first picture frames that I built I used off the shelf lip molding. It works, but the choices of wood types are pretty limited. At my local home improvement store carries molding made from white pine and red oak.
Building picture frames out of scrape wood helps me reduce the scrape wood pile. I only have so much space in my work shop!
A little over a year ago I built a collection of three simple picture frames for my wife’s birthday. I took a picture of each of our children’s face. The picture is just the face of each child. I saw that on Extreme Makeover the Home Edition show. For one family, Ty hung in the master bedroom a set of close up face pictures one for each of their children.
The picture frame is a simple design. It is 2” wide with a rabbit grove 1/4” by 1/4”. A 1/4” depth allows me enough space for the glass, matting, picture, and backer board. Depending on the species of wood I typically use glazer points to secure everything into the frame. This technique works well for softer woods and once you put the picture in you are not planning on changing it.
The first set of frames that I made for my wife’s birthday, I build them out of reclaimed purple heart. It was the first time that I worked with this wood. My Delta bench top planner chewed through it fairly easily. Granted I was taking of 1/64” per pass! However, cutting the rabbit with my stacked dado head cutter…. That was a challenge. It took several passes to mill out the rabbit. My dado head cutter is not the greatest, more on that in a future post.
My joinery for the frame itself is still on the low end of the skill set. My main method is to nail the joint with 18 gauge brads. I have contemplated using biscuits in the joint.
Most of my picture frames are variations of 2” to 3” by 3/4” thick.
Some other variations of the frame that I have done are:
- Rounded over the outer edge of the frame
- Chucked a ‘V’ bit into the router and run a series of groves parallel to the long side
- Put a roman ogie edge on the outside of the picture frame and also on the inside.
- Shadow box
Take a look at the tools and router bits in your shop and use your imagination. I think you will be very pleased with the neat new ideas that you can come up with for picture frames!
Oh, by the way, my wife loved the pictures.
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