The Framers Forum

Hello all,

I have been asked to cut a mount in arqadia board single thickness 8058, with the bevel covered with a strip of paper the same colour as the mount board. Has anyone got any tips, tricks or ideas on how to achieve this look so that the white core is covered and is a solid colour.

Would be extremely grateful for your help as never had to do this before

X

This is extremely fiddly.

You really need to wrap the entire board+bevel and tuck the paper underneath.
You can't really do this on a full mount. There isn't enough paper to go right into the corners.
You need to wrap strips (that's providing you can peel the facing paper off another board) and
bevel them 'pinwheel' fashion underneath a top board. Then you have another white bevel to contend with.

All in all it's a no-goer. You can do it on fabric covered boards but paper just doesn't stretch.

As for applying narrow strips to the bevel, it sounds easy enough but good luck if you try it.

Painting the bevel would probably give better results. You could paint the whole board but then you have to
space the glass away. Quite a long way away as the painted board will curl up.

You can do this.

Cut aperture to score through to the surface paper, or as close as you can get, then cut an aperture out completely - 1 cm or so smaller.

Peel the core away, mitre the corners and fold the paper over. Takes a bit of practice and you need a bone folder or something to establish the bevel and make the corners neat. This was very quickly done.

Just paint the bevel

8058 is a dark green and it won't be difficult to mix some matt paint the same colour, it doesn't have to be dead accurate as the bevel is such a small area. Use some 811 Scotch Tape on the face of the mount-board and cut through the tape when you cut the window. Leave the tape in place to protect the face paper and paint the bevel with a brush not over loaded with paint. When dry peel the tape away carefully.

Here's one I did earlier, although I was going for a contrasting colour

I was thinking this was gonna be fiddly indeed.

The customer says the guy that normally does it for her just glues strips but this just seems incredibly hard as well as potentially messy so not going to attempt that..can imagine it would work better on a thicker mount but this is single thickness.

Thanks for your help prospero and Roboframer, im going to give the thing a go, doing as you suggested Roboframer, then if that fails see about painting the bevel. It always good to try things out for future reference and hopefully I can nail this....hopefully

It's easier doing it with a contrasting colour as the join line will not be so apparent.
I've done it with 2mm gold tape. (pre-sliced)
This stuff is sticky so that makes it simpler. The same stuff used to be available in flat colours.
It's all academic though as you can't get it anymore.

Tricky bits:

Glue. You need enough glue to make it stick fast but too much will ooze and make a mess.

Cutting the strips. Even with a sharp blade its nigh impossible to cut 2mm strips by hand.
Then you have to glue them. If someone had me at gunpoint I'd use spray glue. Ever tried spraying the
backs of a lot of thin strips of paper? If you did manage it you need to leave it for a few minutes.
The 'flash off' time is critical. Apply too soon and it won't stick right. Leave too long ditto.
Then you need to burnish it down hard. Chances are there will be a few rough edges which will
spoil the whole issue.

Paint it like David does.

You won't have to be uber-critical on the colour match as the bevels are on a different plane
so near-as-dammit is good.

prospero wrote:If someone had me at gunpoint I'd use spray glue.

Starch paste might work too, as it often dries invisibly? (Not tried it myself...)

You could of course just give them what they asked for!
To be honest though, normally when it's a case of don't-like-the white-bevel I'll offer to reverse it. No? Well Nielsen do a large range of solid cores, No? Well I could paint it but can't guarantee an EXACT match, No? OK I'll wrap it - the corners might not be as perfect but they'll be OK.

Roboframer, where did you get that bone folder/burnishing tool?

One of our craft suppliers, I shoplifted it.

Hi David,

I like the job you did in that photo. Looks Great!

I haven't done any fancy mount stuff for ages, perhaps it's about time I did a few samples for the shop windows?

This is a gold paper covered bevel on a mount for an 1881 painting by a fairly well known American artists of that era.
The photo does not really do the mount justice. This is all constructed from layers of mountboard and the lovely textured gold paper which has been glued on and cut into the corners with amazing precision.

I liked it so much that I had a tulipwood moulding produced, so that I could copy the same result. You can't really tell the difference between the original and the one made with my custom handfinished moulding, but the skill of the framer from 1881 is really something and I would not like to try and copy his technique. It such a hard thing to get it right doing it his way and our modern day equipment still makes it hard to copy what he would have done by hand using much more basic equipment.

I find myself disliking white bevels more and more and will have to find a good range of solid core mountboards. Apart from the Nielsen range roboframer mentioned who else does a good range of solid core boards?

Crescent's probably the next best bet.

I would go with the painted bevel method doesn't take long

Question is - why isn't the customer not using his normal framer, could be the framer is fed up with sticking strips of paper to the bevel

My thoughts exactly