Cutting and joining Simons M0084 and M0084B

[Not your average framer]

These are the old fashioned style box frame slopping liner frame moulding, whch make up spacers for box frames with a rebate at the rear to accomodate a piece of mountboard and backing board at the rear of the frame. They are produced from fairly soft and narrow unfinished obeche. It would be nice, if they cut and jointed better than they now do. It's a bit of a problem getting these mouldings to join nicely without gaps at the corners. Filling corners inside and outside at the corners is not at all helpful on batches of frames and internal spacers.

Some years ago these particular mouldings were produced from ramin and they were really easy to work will. Well the ramin is long gone and so is the ease of working with these mouldings. I really don't want to fill any gaps at the corners at all. These mouldings are also very soft and often don't cut very cleanly on a Morso and being produced from fairly soft obeche the mouldings can crush with very little pressure while joining on an underpinner. Are there any other tricks which, I might be missing and may help me to solve these problems.

I don't normally have such problems on any other mouldings at all. It's only a problem with these two mouldings.

https://djsimons.co.uk/product/contemporary-3/

Thanks,
Mark.

[Not your average framer]

I am thinking of largely wanting to just use up a few hundred feet of these two mouldings which I have in stock, but I am looking to make it a quick, simple and easy job to do. Spending time, filling and sanding things to look nice, is not really part of the plan at all. I'll probably cut back the narrow front edge of the moulding on my table saw, so that the whole moulding fits completely inside the outer deep box frame moulding, that way the outside of these moulding will never be visible, so I won't need to tidy them up too much.

Since these mouldings are a sloping moulding profile, cutting the moulding back from the narrower front edge, the section at this end becomes thicker and therefore less likely to crush during underpinning the corners. The whole process of producing these frames needs to be really quick. Too many ready made frames are produced to sell at inadequate profit levels, well this is not the plan in this case! These need to be producing a really worthwhile level of Profit and I think that I can definitely do this.

[fitz]

My underpinner tends to leave crush marks and dents in some raw wood mouldings but these marks generally respond well to steam treatment and become as good as new…..

[Not your average framer]

Thanks fitz,

These crush marks are often more severe that just crush marks, they are actually forcing the corners apart and spoiling the corner joints. Because the obeche is so soft ant the top of the moulding is so thin, where it contacts the top clamp pressure pad, there is very little wood there to resist the top clamp crushing the corners. I am looking at cutting the very thn bit on the top face back to make to increase the width where the moulding contacts the top clamp pressure pad to make it less likely to crush.

This will also reduce the overal depth of the moulding, so that all the moulding depth will be hidden inside the outer Deep Box Frame moulding and any gaps in the corner joints which would normally be seen, will be hidden by the outer moulding. I am waiting to see if this makes any gaps on the inside corner joints disappear at the same time. The inner moulding will now be held in place by flexi tabs behind the moulding into the outer moulding. I will be trying this in the next few days.

After cutting down the moulding depth, I expect the interal depth between the inside of the glass to the mountboard at the rear of the frame to come down from 28mm to about 20mm, but the piece of the moulding which is crushing will get quite a lot wide and as a result will withstand a lot more clamping force without crushing. Hopefully, this may solve my problems! I would like to be able to merely stain the resulting inner frame, rather than painting it as I'm thinking that this will save time!