The Framers Forum

I want to join an 8mm x50mm oak strip to form the sides of an inlay frame (the base will be black painted tulip added later). Under pinning doesn't want to play and I'd only get one pin in if it did so how best to joint it? I've used a 23 gauge headless Pinner on a text piece but the pins still show. Is there away of filling the oak or hiding the pins in some way? Or another way of joining I hadn't thought of? It's to narrow for my Hoffmann router Any ideas?

There's a Li Lay hotel in Phnom Penh, Google tells me, but otherwise you've lost me?

Ooops, does anyone else have problems with the iPad auto correction? that's inlay frame of course.

I think you are stuck with tiny pins Alan. Or you could just glue and clamp it and hope for the best.

If you beef up the 'shelf' part then that should help reinforce the corners.


I've got rid of Li Lay for you.

small under pins and glue, sand and apply some pva rub the sawdust in with it,oak is hard anything you put in it has to displace the wood somewhere, softer woods compress, oak will splay, put the v nail closer to the inner edge than the the outer, plenty of glue, do not use more than 1 v nail

Small underpins may help. I'll give that another go. I was thinking of finding a way of using dowels, but haven't found a small enough jig yet.

http://www.axminster.co.uk/festool-domi ... eal-717297

How about a festool domino jointer, think you can get a cutter thats 4mm. You would need to cut the dominos down. though my mind is tired and not more than mush at the moment. With 8mm dowel or domino is going to have so little to penetrate I reckon pins would be much more secure

Personally though for something like that I would just use pins, its easy enough to fill and hide the holes.

Yes, I was having trouble hiding the pins, even with 23 gauge headless pinner, some sanding and a bit of PVA glue, after waxing with a dark wax they showed up. I'm now thinking of making a slightly larger hole first then pinning into that before filling, that would at least get the pins in well below the surface.

I sometimes use a custom moulding that is only 7mm, and predrill, hammer pin in then use a nail punch, fill and never had a problem with disguising the holes.

What do you use as filler? This is plain oak so no painting allowed!

The only problem with pinning into oak especially into such a narrow moulding is the pin vearing off course and coming out the side.

I presume that it was the customer who chose the 8mm thickness. Underpinning into a 8mm thick section of oak can be quite difficult at times and not neccessarily at all that consistent either.

I would glue and clamp it first using a band clamp and then when the glue has fully cured, I would drill it, pin it and fill it with nail hole filler.

It's not a job that would appeal to me and I would be inclined to tell the customer that 8mm in oak is too risky. If you are planning to underpin it, it will be very hard to avoid gaps in the mitres.

If you nail into the top and bottom sides only at least you won't see nail holes at the sides.

If it's a tray frame the moulding is non-structural and entirely for decoration - I think?

So the structure is all in the base. No need to pin at all. So mitre it and glue the corners and clamp. And then glue it all the way round to the base and clamp some more. If you use a thin enough base then you can screw through from the base into the moulding in a sort of pocket-hole fashion. You only need small screws as they're not doing more than holding it together.

All a real fiddle. But if it weren't you wouldn't be asking the question in the first place!

Or there's Nielsen natura. http://theframersforum.com/viewtopic.ph ... er#p108244

I agree with jamesnkr - no pins necessary. I use polyurethane glue and am wondering what glue is used by the previous posters. For wood too narrow for Hoffmann I simply glue and hold by hand for 4 or 5 minutes (boring I know) then carefully let go and leave for an hour before doing the next corner. It drags out the job but saves messing with clamps and pins. The downside of the polyurethane glue is that at least 99% of the glue is wasted. I stick a skewer in the bottle and wipe the glue stick on the skewer - if anyone using it has a better method please let me know.

Alan is using 8mm x 20mm oak and the base of black painted tulip wood will be added later. Glueing the oak to pre-paint wood won't add much strength to the structure of the oak, because it sounds like he is glueing the oak to the paint.

Unless I have missed something, it sounds like the oak would benefit from pinning as well as glueing.

Perhaps a little clarification on this point would be helpful!

Here is a test piece, for clarification. Is 8mm x50mm oak joined to a tulip base ( it's a subframe profile), glued with a single pin near the top which you can just see in the photograph. The subframe is glued and pinned into place. So far it seems pretty strong. I'm going to make a full frame over the weekend...

Nice job.

Had to look very hard to spot the pin hole.

Not your average framer wrote: Glueing the oak to pre-paint wood won't add much strength to the structure of the oak, because it sounds like he is glueing the oak to the paint.

Whilst I agree, does it matter much as the oak is only a bit of decorative trim? You could use masking tape to keep the outer 7mm free of paint to ensure a wood-wood bond.

That's good point about the glue/paint bond. I'll watch out for that.