The Framers Forum

Hello!

I've got a customer who wants a fairly heavy piece of fused glass float framing and I wondered if anyone had any tips on how to securely fix the piece of glass to the mount / backboard? I don't want to use acrylic holders as they will look clunky.

TIA!

Heavey pieces of glass are not always the easiest items if float frame. If the glass is fairly opaque then it may be possible to fix the glaas in place using relacement stick pads made for sticking car rear view mirrors to the winscreen. Unfortunately if the fuse glass is too transparent, you will be able to see the pads through the glass. Another issue to consider will be if the mountboard which you are stick the glass to will have adequate long term strength, to resist delamination within the internal layers which make up the mountboard. This is a bit of an exerience and judgement call.

Added to this a heavey piece of glass may cause the mountboard to bow due to the weight of the glaas. There is a material called "Plastazote" which is a black resiliant foram which may be cut out to press difficult itenms into. It is stocked by "conservation by Design", you often see similar stull for holding tools in cases. It often results in an impressive presentation. Another possibility is to use a clear silicone adhesive. I've even seen pieces of fused glass stuck onto a piece of mirror glass inthe back of a box frame.

There quite a lot to think about and which ever method you decide to use, it probably won't be the easiest job that you have done to get a flawless presentation. Very often really thick mountboard can be very strong, still thick mountbards such as produed by Daler, or Laron Jhul are often very dense and therefore structurally quite strong. It you are thinking about using clear silicone adhesive to mounts onto something like mount board it may be helpful to add a mottled effect to the surface using a natural sponge to make it less easy to discern where the clear silicone begins and ends.

First thought: Epoxy pieces of *thick copper wire to the back so you can thread it though the mountboard and and stout
backing board (2.5mm MDF?). Mountboard itself is not really suitable to support a weighty object. Epoxy should form
a permanent bond to the glass if you make sure it is de-greased thoroughly. The stuff used to stick car rear-view mirrors
to windscreens seems to do trick.

* You could strip a piece of heavy electrical cable and use the bare earth strand.

That's interesting! Bare copper quite often oxides and can look very appropriate and attractive as time goes on! Was not copper wire a favorite fixing method for securing difficult objects in frame at one time, before we all started getting into todays new methods.

how about using a plate hanger?

Yes, a plate hanger is certainly simple and easy, if it does not show through the the fused glass to much. If the colour of the mount board baking is choosen so as not to provide too much of a contrast, so that the plate hanger does not visually stand out too much from the background, the plate hanger may not be very visible when viewed through the fused glass. I'm thnking that this could be a really inspired idea!

Although there are the metal plate hangers hanger with springs, I have mostly used the stick on disc hangers my self for framing uses. These also work quite well on the back of foam core cove boxes in the back of normal sized frames, In general, disc plate hangers are not necessarily only suited for the more obvious uses, but have a miriad of framing uses, if we have the imagination to invisage other uses.

I sometimes get asked to make custom size clip frames, I really don't like making clip frames as you feel embaressed charging what it really cost to make them, but disc plate hangers very nicely solve the issue of how do you add a hanger to a clip frame.