How to make a Picture Frame by Rex Rothing

A Unique Gift Idea

1. Begin by picking out the wood you like. The wood can match furniture in the room, a color in the picture, or just anything you like. You can buy manufactured mouldings or make your own style. Yard sales are a good source of frames if you can resize and refinish them. Woods come in many varieties of color and grain patterns. The wood can also be stained, painted, or clear coated. If you want a walnut color frame it is easiest to buy walnut and finish it clear rather than buying pine and trying to make it look like walnut. Pine is knotty, mahogany is reddish, teak is golden, maple is creamy, walnut is brown, poplar paints well, and there are many more to choose from! See picture "A" below.
2. Figure how much wood you need. This is where it gets tricky. The size of the frame will vary with the size of the moulding you decide to make. You need more wood to make a wider frame because the miters will be longer and the width is more, of course. Measure your art size and write that down, say for example, 16" x 20". Then, measure the width of your moulding and add twice that width to each of the art size dimensions. Add 6" for a 3" wide moulding so the 16 x 20 becomes 22 x 26. Write that down. Now add another inch or two to those numbers so 22x 26 becomes 24 x 28. Now you know you need four sides to make the frame, so you need 2 pieces 3 x 24, and 2 pieces 3 x 28. You can add these all up and you need a piece 3 x 104 inches, or add them as a 6 x 52, or 2 pieces 3 x 52, or a 12 x 28. Remember you lose an 1/8" each time you saw the wood so buy a little extra for that or your frame will end up 2 and 7/8" wide, which is also OK.
3. Rip your wood to its width,  plane the edges if you have allowed for that to save sanding the saw marks, plane it to its final thickness, chop it to the rough lengths you need your 4 pieces.
4. The rabbet is the cut that allows the art and glass to sit in the frame without falling thru. It is usually cut 1/4" wide and as deep as the board will allow leaving about 1/4 to 3/16 on. This cut can be done with a router and edge guide or a table saw. The router may chip out some wood and requires several passes to make it carefully so I find the table saw is really easier and better to cut rabbets. It takes two passes; the first cut, for example, would be setting the blade 1/4" high and the fence 5/8" away while sawing the wood edge vertically. The second cut is setting the blade 5/8" high and the fence 1/4"away while sawing the wood flat side down. If the frame is taller than it is wide, like a shadow box, it is the same but opposite ways. If your rabbet is wider than 1/4 inch you will be covering up your artwork or matting too much. If your rabbet is cut too shallow your frame will have a dust collecting ledge sticking out too far beyond the art.
5. Cut your miters at one end of each of the four pieces without taking off more than one inch. Now to figure your final miter cuts you need to know the outside to outside length of the moulding, corner to corner. Forget the rough measures when you purchased the wood. Write down the art size. Add twice the width of the moulding not counting the rabbet width. (See picture "B"). The length of the miter is equal to the width outside of the rabbet. Do not try to measure inside the frame; it is not accurate. If you had a 16 x 20 artwork and a 3 inch moulding with a 1/4" rabbet, you would be adding 2.75" twice or 5.5" inches, so you would add up to 21.5" x 25.5". Write that down. Now when you pull your tape measure from the point you already mitered towards the end you need to cut you look for 21.5 inches but then add 1/8" allowance for fit. Put a mark on the outside edge of the frame between 21 and 5/8" and 21 and 3/4. Make this mark 1/8" wide. This is where your blade needs to be to cut the correct length. The 1/8" wide mark represents the 1/8" wide cut your blade will make. This way there is no confusion about which side of the mark the blade take off. The 1/8" allowance you added before the cut is in case the glass or the art is not perfectly square. It is a standard of the industry that a 16 x 20 frame will measure inside 16.125 x 20.125 inches. Before you cut it check your math and measure again, add the allowance, and if the mark is the same, chop away at 45 degrees.  If your frame has more or less than 4 sides, you need some more advanced geometry and math skills not covered in this article.
6. Assemble the frame by glueing and clamping it in frame clamps made for this purpose. Biscuits or dowels can be inserted at this time if you don't want any fasteners showing. One corner at a time can be clamped in a miter vise or all 4 corners in a frame clamp. If you don't have these clamps the next best thing is a hold down strap with the ratcheting adjustment. It can be a little tricky but you can strap clamp all 4 corners at one time. In a pinch a piece of cord or twine with a tournaquet twisted tight will also work. Use a pen or scrap of wood to twist the string tight and duct tape to hold it from unwinding while the glue sets up. This works for multi-sided frames too. When the glue sets remove the clamps.
7. Nail or screw the corners for added strength after they have been glued. Countersink the nails and pre-drill the screws for plugs or putty to fill the holes. Most people don't mind the fasteners showing a little bit where they don't see them and it is easier than messing with biscuits or dowels in the miters. Wood putty can be bought in many colors, or stained to match. Screw holes can be bunged with wood plugs or filled with putty. Holes can also be filled with a mixture of epoxy and sawdust.
8. Sand and finish the frame. Use several grits of sandpaper and several coats of finish. Frames can also be left unfinished, waxed, oiled, sandblasted, painted, or distressed and antiqued. There are as many possible frames as there are artworks. 
9. A Gift Idea! A framed picture makes a nice gift idea for anybody. What Mom or Dad wouldn't love a picture of their child or a piece of art created by them? What child wouldn't cherish a picture of their parents or grandparents? Every culture has art. It maybe caveman, or it maybe Picasso, but it is always different.  A picture frame is a nice gift idea for people who have everything. Every picture is different. There are as many pictures as there are people on Earth or stars in the sky.

Picture A: many moulding ideas               Picture B: Art size + 2X this measure + 1/8 = Outsize cut

If you need any help with your picture frame gift idea,

 please feel free to call WoodShop 102 or email anytime.

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