The Framers Forum

A bloody big placemat IOW - well, a table centrepiece I suppose. Took ages to stitch - charged £60 - £160 would have been closer!

wow! very impressive. Your finger tips must be made from girders

Not me, Paula, my framer - and she pre-punched all the needle holes with a home-made awl made from circles of foam board, mount board, a bit of moulding and a 'T' pin.

The mount board is spliced, centrally - it's 34.5" square - had to be that colour (artcare 'medieval forest'), which doesn't come oversized. Had I used my camera and not my phone, you'd probably see the join. It's bonded to 3mm foam board which is also spliced, but with less care.

See the reddish bit of rolled up thick paper in the bin? That's what it came in/on, had been tacked to and rolled up in it for thirty years!

Oh, and it would have been in a Larson Juhl 'Fenice' (pron "Fen-ee-shay" don't you know) moulding, had there not been a strategically placed DING in it! Could have happened here, have had it in stock too long to blame supplier/carrier.

Will be finished Tue or Weds when the replacement arrives.

stare all that I can - I can't see a join anywhere! Sounds like Paula & Mr T were seperated at birth with all that engineering. Don't they say necessity is the mother of invention very clever stuff nevertheless. I always like to see stuff like that, stuff that maybe wouldn't be considered the norm. Thanks for sharing

Nice job Robo, would you post the finished article please?

When you are splicing board together do you opposite bevel the edges and join or just butt them up?

We found opposite bevel then a thin coating of pva on the bevel, join and weight down over night made a very good join, we cut a 2.5 m mount this way

I'll post the finished job - Weds probably.

We opposite bevel and rely on the bond to the board underneath - starch paste - not for any conservation reason, just that it does not dry in a hard film and if any squeezes out or otherwise gets where it's not wanted, it's easy to remove without trace. We also weight (big bits of 6mm glass) and allow to dry overnight.

Here's the awl - patent pending - a tiny nick is taken out with the morso for the head of the 'T'' pin

Nice job! I have to say that I admire Paula's determination with the awl. That's a seriously large number of holes!

I cheat and stick a needle of the same diameter into the chuck of a cordless drill and let the drilling action do the hard work instead. Then I cheat again and leave the stitching to my wife "Vee".

The awl went through the mount board and the 3mm foam board bonded to it like butter so not much determination/hard work required really, that came with the stitching but again, not that difficult, just time-consuming.

Nice colour combination too!

Wouldn't it be funny if the customer said "How do you get it out the frame? I would like to use it occasionally for dinner parties."

Wouldn't it be even funnier if it took 3 sheets of 1600x1100 mm posh glass to get it right

Well, assuming we do get it right on our last full sheet tomoz!

I hope we are not talking AR posh, that would be anything but funny.

We is!

First piece had a chip on one side that showed and even if it didn't could have 'run' - not sure if the chip was on a side we cut or not. Second piece was fine but my framer attempted to lay it in the frame by herself (I was out front taking an order) and it snapped. She should have stood the frame vertically (or waited) but there you go.

I feel your pain, I too have had a 3 sheeter, only normal 48 x 36 though, that was bad enough, it drew tears.

It's such fun sweeping up bits of AR glass, you can hear 'em but you can't see 'em!

All done - the join in the board is vertical, central, you can just make it out at the bottom.

Is that £60.00 total or just for the stitching?

Erm ... to stitch it, the glass alone was £91 !!

and that looks like 464502 LJ to me which would have been a pretty penny, nice job by the way.