After the LOML finished her 5 day Art Glass class at Marc Adams School (taught by John Hamm - a VERY skilled guy) she got a certificate that I wanted to frame for her. Since she fell in love with the G&G glass, I figured a G&G frame would be appropriate. So I picked this:
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Not having any idea what size the frame was, I set the horizontal inside dimension to 10 1/2" and scaled the rest of the frame. I liked the proportions.
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Today I found a walnut board I liked, milled the pieces, mortised and tenoned them, and taking the advice of Darrel Peart, used a block plane and sand paper to round over. And I agree with him: gives a subtle different look than routing the round overs. Made a template for the top rail cloud lifts, and here we are.
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The top has not been rounded yet - want to wait until the routing is done. At this point I realized I really liked this frame and would be making more of them so I wanted a routing template that I could re-use. The top and bottom are 3/4", while the sides are 5/8" which gives that depth that I think is really cool. So this is what I came up with:
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So once the frame is glued up, I can clamp both templates in place and do the routing. The 3/4" mdf on the bottom of the template fits snugly between the "ears" of the frame, and registers the template on the side rails.
So now the questions: as you can see, the mdf between the 2 openings in the templates is pretty thin. Will a wood hardener, Like Minwax or PC Petrifier help make the mdf a bit stronger, or will it just make it more brittle and likely to break? Next, the ebony will be 1/8" thick and I'm worried about test fitting it and then having it break when I try to remove it. My plan is to make duplicates, or at least leave the tool setups alone until I'm done. Also wondering if you wise, Yoda like folks have any advice on the process of breaking the edges of the ebony before final assembly, besides sand gently, very gently. Also planning on using glaziers point to mount the backing in the frame unless you have another suggestion. Back of the frame has not been rabbited yet for the glass, so there are possibilities.
Thanks for any and all suggestions, kids.