Cutting rebates for half-lap picture frames

[Steven Mikes]

What's the proper way to do this? I'm making a picture frame with simple half-lap joints at the corners. I started cutting the rebates with a rebate plane along the full length of each piece but quickly realized that's not really what I want to do since it would leave half of the joint void...

[Joe Bailey]

It would seem you need stopped rabbets/rebates on (2) opposing sides of the frame.
The frame members in questions would be those with the "lower half" of the joint.

final-2.jpg

[Warren Mickley]

You don't need a stopped rabbet. You need to adjust the shoulder on the back side so that it fills up the rabbet.

[Steven Mikes]

The rebate on a picture frame needs to be on all four sides, no? Warren I'm having trouble picturing how that could work. I can't see how to do this without stopped rebates.

[Bill McDermott]

I think Warren is saying...
-Cut the laps on the lower pieces to the width of the upper pieces.
-Cut the rabbets on all four pieces.
-Cut the laps on lower pieces to fit the rabbeted upper piece. (It will be less than the width of the stock by the depth of the rabbet).

Rabbet and laps are both down the middle of the stock.

Alternative is to glue in a filler strip. It will be very hard to see matched stock in end grain like that.

[Warren Mickley]

The rebate on a picture frame needs to be on all four sides, no? Warren I'm having trouble picturing how that could work. I can't see how to do this without stopped rebates.

Take as an example a !/2 X 1 frame with a 1/4 X 1/4 rabbet. then on the front side it looks like a 1x1 half lap and on the back it looks like a 3/4X3/4 half lap. The reason is that on the piece that overlaps on the front, you have made the shoulder 3/4 from the end instead of 1" from the end.

To visualize this, make a lap joint, then rabbet both pieces. There will be a gap as you can imagine. But you can also see by looking at this gap how cutting the shoulder on one of the pieces at 3/4 instead if 1 would fill up the gap for you.

[Jeff Zihlman]

Warren,

Thank you for this explanation! It helps clear up an issue or two I've been thinking about. What about a bridle joint, similar process?

Jeff