RMFs - scruffy backs

[vividP]

Spent Saturday fiddling around making up some RMF samples with strut backs - later on when admiring my handiwork, noticed the shoddy looking backs of the mouldings. One in particular is a distressed silver foil that just wraps a scruffy edge a couple of mm round the back. My questions are...when making up frames (without tape to hide the moulding back face) do you choose mouldings to have a neat back? Do you ever paint/tape/whatever the backs? Do you not care?

Would be interested in your thoughts
Thanks

P

[prospero]

Lion do some tape that is like masking tape, but is black.(p78 in the cat.) I have used this on readymades in the past and it looks very neat. Like any stuff of it's ilk, it can dry out and lift after a few years but on the whole it does last very well.

[Roboframer]

I don't care; maybe I should.

Some foiled mouldings are a mess on the back and any I've hand finished are worse, others are quite tidy. But what they all have in common is flexitabs and a naff-looking but functional stand of some sort.

I suppose not all RMFs go on shelves against walls etc, some may go on the grand piano etc and we've all seen those nice RMFs with the velvet covered backs - you know, the back board, the strut and the back of the frame covered in the same stuff. Sometimes the back slides in so there's no hardware to see; sometimes there's turn buttons.

Couldn't cope with that, not unless RMFs were what I primarily did with custom framing secondary.

[Not your average framer]

People who buy ready made frames rarely have any interest in what the back looks like, usually the main thing they want is CHEAP!

If you are framing a customers work in a ready made frame to save the customer either time, or money, then that's another matter and in that case I would tape the back and charge for doing so.