Framing Some Recent Prints: A Good Day

My wife says she likes watching me working in the shop as I seem so focused and relaxed. She is right. Yesterday was a good day like that. A morning bike ride, then breakfast and out to the shop for a shortish project I dreamed up the day before. Some of my recent square prints were begging for frames and to be displayed.

So I found myself out in the shop most of the day fashioning them from scraps of pine I had laying about. I used nothing but hand tools so the work was quiet and contemplative. Japanese hand saws, a rabbet plane, smoothing plane, and a chisel were all I really needed. The work was small and delicate as the frames were small and I wanted them to be light and simple. I had Jackson Browne's Solo Acoustic Vol 1 and 2 playing. An excellent album I only recently discovered. I grew up with his music but never owned an album of his. None of the songs were ones I was familiar with but that didn't matter. His rapport with the audience makes it all the more interesting to listen to.

I finished the first frame this morning and while the paint on the second dries I thought I would start the process of sharing.

Update: I liked making the first two so much I made 2 more. One is for a larger 8x12 print and the other much smaller for one of my 4x4 note card images. Photos at the end.

The prints were ones I printed square as 6x6" images on 8x8" sheets of Ilford MG Art300 paper. (They are described here...)

I started with a strip of relatively clear pine about 12x34mm. I needed about a meter (40 inches). The pine was too wide for these frames so I made a small rabbet on each long edge before ripping it in half along its length. This would give me material for 2 frames. I then cleaned up the saw line with a smoothing plane before cutting the frame pieces using a homemade mitre-box.

I glued the mitred edges to form the frame. Once dry I filled and sanded them. I then cut slots in the corners and sawed thin strips of oak to glue into the slots to strengthen the frame and provide a small decorative feature. Once these were trimmed and sanded I masked this outside edge and painted the front of the frame black leaving the edges as 'brightwork' or natural wood finish.

I mounted the photo using 3M PMA onto some Bristol board (thick cardboard). I planned to not use glazing as I wanted the texture of the MG Art 300 paper to be apparent.

I wanted to be able to change the photos out of the frame so I made a somewhat complicated mechanism on the back to hold the mounted photo in place. I glued corner tabs made from scrap photo paper into the bottom two corners of the back of the frame. I then made a retainer from thin oak that I screwed to the top of the frame. This piece swings away to allow the photo to inserted or removed. On the back of the mount board I added small spacers to make up the difference between the rabbet depth and the thickness of the photo plus mount board.