Frame Up

Taking my usual shotgun approach to job completion, I decided to make a frame for the handbill I picked up (or should I say tore down?) when I was in Florence a couple years ago. It's going to be too cold for gluing and painting out in the woodshop pretty soon so I thought I'd knock out the frame while the weather was warm enough. 

I was planning on making some picture frames with the boys in the high school Woodshop just prior to my heart attack. I made the above miter clamps and bought a key hole router bit to see how the process was going to work. We did a little math to determine the lengths of the pieces given a set size for the photo, the amount of the rabbet, the width of the stock, etc. They had a little bit of a struggle with that but nothing we couldn't deal with. I was going to make a few more clamps if things worked out but never got the chance. I did bring this set home with me, and the key hole bit, since I bought the material and the bit. 

Not too tough making a frame this way. The material is the cut-offs from the slats on the porch swing. Not the greatest lumber but I'm planning on hanging the poster out in my little woodshop so nothing fancy is required. In fact, I was just going to staple up the handbill but decided to see how tough it was going to be to make a frame now that I've got things pretty well put together in the shop. Piece O' Cake. 

I did a little painting out there as well. Looks pretty good. More importantly, it's getting to be a decent place to work. I also put a new radio out there. It's a cheapie but it pulls in the station that's 20 miles down the road. They play decent enough music along with the local forecast. Good enough for me. It's also got a CD player built in for when they broadcast some of the local high school sports or the Bulls games. I can do baseball and football on the radio but I draw the line on basketball.

The frame needs another coat of the combo stain/varnish I'm using and a piece of glass then that'll be knocked out. One more down. Spinning tools and a seat bracket for the Sprint on deck.