Slips and Tips ??

[Bagpuss]

Hello there, I'm looking for some top tips on top slips !
a while ago I bought myself one of those Fletcher Filet master gizmos and I have used it on the odd occassion to attach slips to the inner rim of a mount. I don't have a problem with this at all, I cut a reverse bevel on the mount, cut the slips to size, stick onto the board using filet tape (very sticky) and then cover
the underside of the slip with some pH7-70 tape.

A few weeks ago I had an order for about 10 frames with a posh looking Arquadia mount with gold slip on the mount. What a lot of faffing about ! by the end of it I was cursing the day that customer walked in the door... I was to-ing and fro-ing between the bench and the Morso, all afternoon, I just couldn't get the fit right.

Could I ask anyone reading this to give me a sure fire method for happy slip cutting and pasting ? I would be forever in your debt.
Thanks in advance

[prospero]

Move the bench nearer the Morso.

I would also be grateful for an easy method.

The way I do it:

Figure out the theorectical length for the first long side - window dimension +2x fillet lip width. Cut a piece of fillet slightly longer. Check the fit and shave down until it fits perfectly. Take that piece and try it on the opposite side. It will either be too long, too short or a perfect fit. You should be able to eyeball just how much longer/shorter the second piece should be and adjust the Morso accordingly. Repeat process for the shorter sides.

I am assuming that with mounts cut on a CMC, the windows would all be exactly the same and perfectly square. On a hand mountcutter the squareness of the window depends on the squareness of the board. In normal practice, a small amount of tolerance in board squareness is acceptable. You don't notice it. Except when you come to fit fillets.

[Bill Henry]

I use the FilletMaster and I think it’s the greatest thing since cream filled cupcakes. I’m not sure I could go back to the cut and shave, cut and shave method.

If the FilletMaster is calibrated correctly and doesn’t slip (pun intended) on you, the fillet cuts should be dead bang accurate each and every time

If all of your mounts are exactly the same size, and you are cutting them with a CMC, you might be able to cut the one fillet that would fit each and every mount. If the mounts are cut by “hand” even you are cutting the outside blank at the same time, I wouldn’t count on being able to cut all the fillets at the same time.

It’s a pain in the backside, but I’m not sure there are any shortcut alternatives to FilletMaster –> Morsø –> work table x 4 for each mount x 10 for the job.

[Jonny2morsos]

A while back I did a 6 aperture mount with fillets in all the apertures. There was one large one top left and 5 smaller ones to the right and below. Made the fillets for the large aperture no problem and then did the smaller ones. On putting the smaller ones in I found I had cut 20 pieces just a fraction too big. So I recut the mount with the small windows a tiny bit bigger (after doing a test on a small scrap to get the window size right). Better I thought to waste a piece of mountboard than try and shave a tiny piece off each fillet.

So... should I have cut the fillets before I cut the mount and made the mount to the fillet size not vice versa?

I will admit to having the luxury of a CMC though.

John.

[Roboframer]

I'll raise you 28 (CMC-less) two and a half by one and a quarters!

[Jonny2morsos]

Is the calculator in your 2nd picture to work out what to charge or how long it took?

I am sure it is not to work out 7 x 4 = 28

There is a set of 50 cig. cards in the "jobs I'll get around to some day drawer". No may be not!

Nice job by the way.

John.

[kev@frames]

£60 for the mount? < stabbing at a price.

[Roboframer]

£2 per foot for the slips (£35) £1 per aperture - plus whatever the mount would have been with one hole in it, which I may have waived, so your'e about right.

[Bagpuss]

Thanks for the useful advice everyone but when I saw that photo from Roboframer with 28 hand cut windows with slips I started to feel a bit faint and had to go and have a lie down .....

[Moglet]

Continuing with the "embarrasingly-rather-than-fashionably-late" theme on this one (hence the new sig... )

Tip: if you are using a Cassesse underpinner mini wedges to join the fillets before fitting into the mount aperture, it's useful to make the fillets ever-so-slightly shorter than needed (talking in the 500 micron range here).

[Not your average framer]

Thanks for the useful advice everyone but when I saw that photo from Roboframer with 28 hand cut windows with slips I started to feel a bit faint and had to go and have a lie down .....

Hi Bagpuss,

It's often not so bad as you might think! The first one is a bit scary, but practice does get you there and with practice come confidence to do more.

Some time ago I was asked to do a large multi-aperture double mount for wedding reception table layout and guess what, I didn't know how to do it! So I asked on this forum and John (Roboframer) provided a tutorial complete with step by step pictures (Thanks John). So I did exactly as I was shown and it came out perfect on my first attempt. This tutorial is well worth looking at if you can locate John's posting.

There are also hints and tips which we all need when we get started doing something more difficult, but there usually is help if we ask. We all start off knowing very little and none of us get there overnight, but these apparently scary jobs are our stock in trade and can be learnt.

If you think something is scary, perhaps it's a good thing to learn how to do! You'll end up with a sample to show your customers and it'll do your confidence a power of good. Go on, push your bounderies and learn something new!

[Not your average framer]

Everyone of us should be able to get good results with mounts and slips, but the first requirement to do this is accurate and square mountcutting without hooking.

Over the years I've really struggled to maintain top quality mountcutting. I have artharitis in my hands, shoulders, neck and can't always easily tell if a problem is me or the mountcutter. Well, here's a few tips, which I hope may help:

Calibrate whatever you used to cut and square the mountmount so that it is spot on. Wall mounted cutters can develop bearing play, which can require adjusting from time to time. Check the squareness of you cutter with something you can trust. I use a device called a "Bevel box" from axminster tools, it is a digital angle measuring device which enable you to see how much effect you are getting as you make adjustments. It relies upon a pivoting weight inside, but if you stand your mountcutter upon it's side or it's end you can do the same when squaring your mountcutter as well. It has a zero setting button which your can set against one axis and then transfer to the other axis to check your set up.

At this point, I need to make clear that although you might think that squaring the metal parts of your equipment should result in perfectly square cuts, as they say in the song "It ain't neccessarily so". This means that after cutting you mountboard you should with the machine in position as when you adjusted it and the mountboard in the machine, place the bevel box against the cut edge of the mountboard and check the reading. If there is an error, you now know how much to add or take away from your original set up of the machine.

For those who are wondering, this level of accuracy is not neccessary for getting perfect mounts, so don't get too worried about getting things too exact. It's just an easier way of understanding what's happening when you are squaring up your equipment!

O.k. Now the problem of hooking when using you mountcutter. I've had loads of problems with this and from time to time, they re-ocurr and need sorting out. It is my own opinion that zero hooking should be possible if you do the right things and your mountcutter is in satisfactory condition, but a lot of framers think that some problems are normal, when they don't need to be!

I have an old Keencut Ultimat and it's showing it's age. Because it stands on the two black extrusions and each end without support in the middle it has over the years very slightly sagged in the middle due to gravity and resulting in poor clamping of the mountboard in the middle of the baseboard. O.K., this is no big deal, the whole baseboard section now stands upon layer of mountboard, the base is dead flat and clamping of the mountboard under the cutterbar is the same along it whole length. Before I did this, the very small and almost invisible gap under the cutting bar allowed the cutting bar to pivot and change the angle of the blade as it is inserted into the mountboard causing a hooked cut.

I have also stuck a thin piece of barrier paper in the baseboard under the back of the cutting bar to provide extra friction, so that the mount board cannot move when the blade is being inserted into the board. Like many others I do from time to time clear my mountcutter with baby lotion which gets it nice and clean, but without the barrier paper the baseboard is too smooth and clean, which can allow the mountboards to move as the blade go in and then the sideways force from the blade relaxes as the blade moves along the cut allowing the mountboard to move back to it original position.

The poviting bearing on the blade carrier is also subject to wear resulting in bearing play, which is also a factor in both accuracy and hooking problems with you mountcutter. My final aspect to preventing hooking is Keencut's "0.015 Tech S" single sided blades.

Just in case anyone thinks otherwise, I am very happy with the quality and perfomance of my Keencut Ultimat, which was one of the earliest they made and before I had it, it was well hammered in the workshop of a very busy large framers. This post is not intended to be negative, but to show that fine tuning of our equipment and perfect mount cutting may require a little extra effort from ourselves. Other types of mountcutters will be prone to other issues which may need investigating and correcting.

Perfect mountcutting is achievable and in general I have little difficulty with cutting and fitting mount slips. All of your equipment should be accurately calibrated and that's down to you.

Digital calipers are aslo another important item I rely on when calculating my cutting size for mount slips as they enable me to accurately measure the width of the slip.