The Framers Forum

Hi everyone I am new to the forum been checking it out for the past week & have found it to be very useful.

I am not a framer yet but me & the missus have been thinking of setting up a small gallery & offering a framing service, I used to own a sign company so I've done quite a bit of graphic design work over the years & as we had a wide format colour printer we used to print onto canvas & make frames for customers also used to print pictures & laminate them onto 10mm foamex & frame them which is just a sign I guess, I have also worked in engineering & with glass in the past.

That's the sum of my experience but I'm a fast learner & will probably look to do a coarse or two any in workshops that people have been on in the past & would recommend? I plan on buying second hand kit have found out from you guys what seems to be the best stuff to buy I would like professional equipment as I don't see the sense in buying cheap stuff & replacing it later on or I maybe wrong not sure be nice to get your opinion on this.

As we are looking at premises I would like some idea of how much space I would require for a workshop area, I would like a morso so I think I read that I would need about 7 foot either side of the machine for the mouldings so that's a starting point but how many sq mtrs would you suggest for a small one man workshop?

Thanks for all your valuable knowledge, look forward to your comments

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Where are you based, might be helpful to point you in the direction of courses.
Buying professional equipment is a must I reckon, so buy what you can afford.
There are a few threads on here for layout space and sizes, it all depends what equipment you have and what you plan on doing with it.

I did a one to one workshop with Jan Stanlick a year or so back. It worked out really well as he came to me and I then trained on my own equipment and he helped with the correct set up and a also repaird some of my gear too.

I tried at first to avoid any training to save a bit of money for other bits of equipment but it just ended up costing a lot more in wastage from messing up.

Chris

I am based on the Norfolk coast at the mo although the gallery will be based on the south coast, would like to do some training in this area before we move, the nearest place for training I have seen is in Northampton, never thought of on site training that would be worth looking into, Thanks

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