Tag: Woodworking

New take on a traditional picture frame

This past month I have been working in the barn. Trying to coming up with new projects to make and post for sale. While working on larger projects, I like to make smaller projects to get a variety uploaded. I made several different frames and wanted to make something new, different. I wanted something to spark visual interest. I wanted a new picture frame style. There was a catch, I did not want to use up too much of my good stock on this adventure. This frame would need to be done of mostly scrapes or at least shorts.

I pondered for a moment to come up with a design I thought was pleasing. Then I remembered that my plans are meant to be broken. With a tendency to alter the plans as I find fit. Mostly because I made a mistake and do not want to scrap the whole project. Then I grabbed two lengths of maple and walnut thinking that one or the other will be the inlay. As I was milling up the boards I realized that I was a couple inches short of both pieces to make a 11 x 14″ frame.

No plan “Plan”

Now this is where my “no plan, plan” works. I thought, what the heck, lets finish milling the stock and put a double inlay into both and I will find more stock in the pile or make a different size frame. Well none of that happened. I inlay-ed both pieces and figured better to make a complete frame instead of two half completed frames. Then I was shocked at how it looked. The alternating style is very appealing.

I decided to carry this look over to the splines. Now the dilemma was, what to do with the splines, alternating maybe?. There are only one corner all maple and another all walnut. The last two are half and half. Alternating the colors on the splines only twice instead of three. This made the transition look good and not washed out.

Perfect lined up miters

Miter joints on the frame had to be perfect. If not then the alternating colors would look horrendous. I took special care to ensure I had perfect lined up miters. each inlay lined up with its alternating color. I put a route a roman ogee profile on the inside to dress up the solid lines. This introduced curves and softened up the sharpness.

This frame is perfect for a color photo that fades into a black and white picture. I am making more of this design but with other colored wood species. This one has a formal feel and I am looking to create a more casual and fun frame to appeal to everyone. The next one will look just as good but will not take as much time. I have corrected the challenges and ready to batch these out.