The Framers Forum

High praise indeed and well deserved.

The one in progress currently is oak. I want a finish that is a rich dark brown, that sort of near-black that has hints of red and green in it. I started with some dark oak spirit stain and hoped that button shellac would get me there; it's not dark enough. I've added in some Black Polish to the shellac which has helped, but I don't want it to be a black frame. Short of starting again with some Van Dyke (which I meant to but forgot about...) any other suggestions?

If it's oak, stain it first with some dark oak water-stain and vandyke brown. Then mix some Brown umber and mineral black dry pigments ( not burnt umber nor raw umber) into shellac tinted with your oak spirit stain. Keep testing on a blank piece of obeche. When happy, glaze your mix over the waterstained oak.
Ignore the colour it dries to. Now paint over with clear shellac and keep adding some black shellac into it untill you get the colour you want.

Thanks, VF. I love your recipes, they remind me very much of the Three Witches' brew in Macbeth.

All:
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Second Witch:
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Needless to say I was missing the toe of frog and I couldn't find the packet of howlet's wing I bought the other month, but it turned out quite well. Will post a picture.

What did you mean by brown umber? This? Is it a dry pigment? https://www.mylands.com/brown-umber

Yes, that's the stuff. It depends where you want to buy it. Liberon do it in their dry pigment range, so any decent art shop should have stock.

I hope there's no irony in your witches brew comments ...
Keep it up though, I do enjoy your often astringent postings.

No! I absolutely *love* your recipes. They're like something out of a long-gone world (which of course they are, in a way). There's a real element of magic to them. Crossed with Chemistry. And they're just an excuse to buy another little pot of something to line up on the shelf. And having been inspired by that set of your rosewood frames I saw some years ago, it is an honour to sit at the Master's feet and learn.

All I meant was I only had about half the ingredients, but had a bash anyway!

That's fine, and thankyou.
Now let's see how you got on with the homework I gave you last week ...

Jamesnkr wrote:They're like something out of a long-gone world (which of course they are, in a way). There's a real element of magic to them. Crossed with Chemistry.

I couldn't have said it better myself!

I really love the creative side of doing stuff like this. It's all Pete Bingham's fault that I got hooked on this you know. I wasn't even a picture framer in those days. I was in the second hand book business and used to cut mounts to use up and sell collectible book plates out of damaged old books and vintage adverts out of old magazines.

Someone at the company which supplied me with my mountboard, asked me while I was placing an order for another pack of mountboard, if I was going to the Spring Fair, so I asked what the Spring Fair was all about. I went there just to be nosey, walked around a corner and spotted Pete Bingham demostrating hand finishing. My wife had trouble dragging me away! I was hooked! Hand finishing was a large part of what led my to be a framer.

I've been at it since about the year 2,000. I still love it as much as ever all these years later. I never originally planned to become self employed, but it was either that, or starve at the time. It's amazing how things happen that you never planned, or wanted. Things sometimes just come out of the blue and everything changes and you go with it because needs must.

I had already worked a bookbinder repairing books for a bookshop in Southsea and restoring old documents for the same shop. It was through this same shop that I was trained to be a bookbinder and paper conservator. Some years before this, I had to spend some time out of my original engineering career while suffering with M.E. and during this time I made a living buying, repairing and selling antique and vintage items. Quite a lot of this was small items of furniture, or woodwork.

It's taken me about forty years to final get to where I am now, but none of the things I had to learn along the way got wasted and I still used many of these same skills today. It's been quite a journey!

Here's some photographs of my homework that I took for somebody else. They're finished frames with the exception of the chevron.

Black painted ash, French-polished oak with gilt slip (I'll being sent back to do that one again with proper gold and with the eye of newt I didn't have), Zebrano veneer with lackadaisical French polishing but I didn't want it too shiny, a Raw Umber that turned out rather well though not the woody finish I was hoping for, and finally some blue paint.
Familiar from above the oak, the grey and the blue, with a black-polished oak that really does look much better in the flesh than here.

James, I love the finish on the oak frames. They have good colour, are well polished and retain enough wood grain is give that visual surface complexity best liked on wooden frames, ..ie they look nice and woody.
I don't do any painted finishes myself but there is one small criticism of these and others I have seen, and that is not cutting in cleanly the inner sight- edge corner. Many people seem happy to leave a big blob of material filling out the corners. I've done it myself and we all seem to concentrate on the outer edges when the "blobby" finish just makes the frame look like the work of an enthusiastic amateur. Keep your corners sharp.

The black polish on A33 oak has just become one of my favourite combinations and looks really smart; the hard oak combined with the firm lines of the fine detail of the moulding really goes well with a shiny black. You are spot on; that blue frame has nearly gone in the bin several times; it probably will now - having been publicly humiliated!

Please don't bin the blue frame James.

What we did with rejects, and small frames made with off cuts, was to put them in a box out side the shop priced and clearly marked "Framed Seconds" They went like hot cakes and added to the revenue stream.

Just a suggestion.

Peter