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Storing Mountboard?

Posted: Wed 16 May, 2018 9:33 am
by cebrooker
Hello all,

I have been away for a while, the framing had to take a back seat until the new house was finished, now it is and I'm building a workshop in it!

Does anyone have any suggestions for storing and organising mountboard? Photos would be most appreciated.

Thanks for your time.

Charles

Re: Storing Mountboard?

Posted: Wed 16 May, 2018 9:48 am
by prospero
Until recently I had mine in a 'bin'. Rather like a print browser, but with straight sides. About 2ft deep, 2ft high and a tad
wider than a sheet of mb. You can get a lot in it. :D Easy to knock up with a few bits of 2x2" timber and some chipboard/MDF.
The main thing is to put some strips of thin wood crosswise on the base as mb to keep the packs from bending.

I've shifted it all now to a just-the-right-shape space under the stairs. Made dividers from 2.5mm MDF. :P

People all have different size/shape workshops so you have to adapt to suit your environment.


Offcuts are another matter..... :|

Re: Storing Mountboard?

Posted: Wed 16 May, 2018 9:53 am
by cebrooker
Thanks Prospero,

On the subject of offcuts....What size should I be throwing away??

Re: Storing Mountboard?

Posted: Wed 16 May, 2018 10:54 am
by David McCormack
Offcuts... keep what you don't need and throw away what would have been just perfect for that one job! :lol: That's just the way it is :lol:

Re: Storing Mountboard?

Posted: Wed 16 May, 2018 12:03 pm
by pramsay13
I keep all my main whites and blacks and sticky board etc. under my table.
Each board type has its own dookit with full size boards underneath and smaller boards on top. There is probably room for around 30 sheets of each and I either buy the 5 packs or 25 packs depending what it is.
For the coloured boards I just have them sitting behind my morso right hand side so I just look through them if I need a small piece of something random.
Anything smaller than around A3 size I put to one side and they are given away every few months to local art groups or kids clubs.

Re: Storing Mountboard?

Posted: Wed 16 May, 2018 12:51 pm
by prospero
I've got a big pile of offcuts and they are a pain. But like most folks I hate to chuck a perfectly good, usable piece.
Looking though the heap the other day I realised that some bits go back 10 years or more. Some a lot more. I reasoned
that if I had chucked them out 10 years ago I wouldn't have missed them. :lol: :roll:

The fact is, you always get more small bits than small jobs. Of course if some came in tomorrow and wanted 1000 8x6 mounts,
any colour I would be quids in. But it's never going to happen. It's cheaper to cut into full sheet than spend 1/2 hour looking for
a small bit. :|

Re: Storing Mountboard?

Posted: Wed 16 May, 2018 9:25 pm
by Not your average framer
I use a lot more whites, cream and neutral colours of mountboard, than ones with stronger, or darker colours. However I am a bit restrictive with how many colours I stock in whites, creams and neutrals. As a result I buy these colours in larger quatities, which are also conservation quality mountboards, in a limited range of colours at a budget price. The savings on this limited range of colours can be really big if you don't mind buying a reasonable number of boards in one go.

I'm getting these sort of boards for about half of the price that you would normally pay for just one sheet. Since I am paying so little, there is not much advatage in keeping small off-cuts from these boards, therefore it makes good sense to only keep the bigger off-cuts. However, with the stronger, or darker colour boards you won't be buying all that many sheets of these and as your stock levels of these won't be high, keeping a reasonable stock of off-cuts may help you to avoid ordering a particular colour of board, when you only need a little bit.

There's no need for me to be mentioning suppliers names, if you are wanting to check out the deals that are available, as quite a range of supplier are offering their one budget ranges. If you ask around you will soon find out what's on offer. There was a question about sizes of off-cuts worth keeping and you will get a range of opinions about this. It's not that a one is right, or wrong about this, but what works for each individual. In my case, I like to have a few smaller sizes in stock, but just a few. The larger sizes are more useful, therefore you try to avoid throwing those away.

Generally anything bigger than a quarter of a sheet is always going to be worth keeping if you have enough storage space. It's probably a good idea to have some way of organising your off-cuts to be able to find the colours that you are looking for quite quickly. In my own case, I'm not particularly as lwell organised as I should be and now I will only have a small area to work in, I will need to get my act together in this regard. I hope at least some of this may be of help.

Re: Storing Mountboard?

Posted: Fri 18 May, 2018 7:51 am
by cebrooker
Thanks all for your replies. I'm absolutely convinced every square inch is salvageable for the right job!

Re: Storing Mountboard?

Posted: Sun 20 May, 2018 9:41 pm
by tebbles
If you have space, I built these shelves.
mountboards.jpg
mountboards.jpg (328.62 KiB) Viewed 5884 times

Re: Storing Mountboard?

Posted: Sun 20 May, 2018 10:13 pm
by prospero
cebrooker wrote:Thanks all for your replies. I'm absolutely convinced every square inch is salvageable for the right job!
True. But are you in the salvage business? One day I decided to slice up all my glass offcuts into nice neat photoframe sizes. I did
10x8s, 8x6s and so on. Even made some custom boxes to store them. I had 1000s of bits. :D If I used one every year I was doing well.
That was 30 years ago and I still have them. Apart from a load I gave to a photographer mate and I think he still has them. :lol:

You always get more small bits than small jobs. :|

There are exceptions.... One framer I knew never had an offcut in his workshop. Any small bits got made into a frame. He did this
throughout the year and put any picture he could find (that fitted) in a frame. by the end of the year he had 100os of little pictures.
He was lucky though. His back door opened into a carpark in the touristy area of Lincoln. Every year there is an enormous Christmas
Market there. Hundreds of thousands of folks would pass his back door in the three days it was open. He set up a trestle table just inside
the door (no stall fees) and knock out the pictures. Nothing over a tenner. Shifted them like hot cakes. :D What didn't sell was saved for
next year. If you have an outlet then you can capitalise on your offcuts. Not many people are in that happy position though.....

Re: Storing Mountboard?

Posted: Wed 23 May, 2018 9:04 am
by Justintime
9 out of 10 times, the offcuts are 2mm shorter than you need.
Smashing glass with a hammer gloves and eye protection in a big bin is very satisfying, especially when work is quiet..
Offcuts of 1400 mic board are really useful cut into wide strips for the slips on the mountcutter.
Offcuts are useful for undermounts when book hinging, especially if a board/pack comes in with some damage.
I give glass offcuts as gifts/sweeteners to artist customers who fit their own work, cut to their standard sizes, when im not busy. I figure its all part of a tidy up.

Storage wise, I looked at the design of an mdf storage rack made by a supplier and had my friend help me make one in a similar style , but different of course.
I also picked up 2 metal on wheels racks that are moveable undercounter type things.
I googled for images of these things and it was a toss up between a day or two of labour and materials and a permanent bolted to the wall solution, or something quicker cheaper and smaller that can be moved about , should I need to reorganise the workshop.
FYi I think we managed to make a glass holder and a mountboard holder from 2 8x4 sheets of 18mm ply.

Re: Storing Mountboard?

Posted: Wed 23 May, 2018 9:43 pm
by Not your average framer
Some thoughts:

If you are in commercial premises, every square feet of space you have in your premises is costing you money, regardless of what the space is being used for. If the cost of storing your mountboard off-cuts exceeds the amount you are paying for the space to store that mountboard, then it would be better to do something more productive with the space.

There is a limit to how many off-cuts can be saved and to how many will ever get used. Saving unpopular mountboard colours, or off-cuts of a size that is likely to be too small for most framing jobs is just using up space that is costing you money. If you are paying money for space that is not making you a profit, maybe there are more profitable ways in which you can use that space.

Waste materials are just that, waste materials. Until a customer will pay you a proper price for something made from those materials, or just buy the materials, they have no meaningful value. Anything is only worth what somebody else is willing to pay for it. Everybody will strike there own balance on such things and I don't think that there is any magic answer to this, but nothing is set in stone and you can always make your own adjustments as the lessons of time and experience increase you understanding.

For myself, I never had a proper business plan when I opened my shop and to be honest about it, it was a bit of a leap in the dark. Perhaps the most sensible advise to you at this time is to not commit too much time and money into your immediate plans, but play it by ear and fine tune things as you go along. I learnt a lot of things as I went on and some lessons I had to learn the hard way, sometimes things are going to be like that!

Re: Storing Mountboard?

Posted: Thu 24 May, 2018 5:50 am
by Keith Hewitt
This thread reminds me of a framer in Istanbul
He never threw away any mount offcuts, just stored them in a spare room.
He opened the door to show me, and all I saw was a wall of offcuts, the room was chocker, you could barely step inside. :head:
He seemed quite proud of the collection.
And in case you are wondering ........ it was a wooden building :Slap:

Re: Storing Mountboard?

Posted: Fri 01 Jun, 2018 7:20 am
by whitbyframer
I've only been operating six months but have found that an old print browser is useful to store boards in. I keep the full sheets behind it with a thick piece of mdf in front of them to stop them bending, and then larger off cuts go in the browser. Works quite well for me as I've got limited space and only buy in single sheets as customers orders come in.