The Framers Forum

Hi, hope you can help me out.

I've had an order placed by an artist about to do an exhibition consisting of 20 or so paintings on stretched canvas and on canvas board. She's beaten me down on price per unit and I'm beginning to wonder if I'll make anything on it!

She wants them 'all the same'. White paint finish, tray/float mounted, but with a wide moulding like this artists example:
.

I'm really struggling with this as the standard tray moulding is only 10mm wide when viewed with the canvas in it. She's got roughly two sizes of artwork and wants a min 25mm wide on the smaller works, but min 35mm wide on the bigger works.

The big issue is the stretch canvas -> they're 18mm deep. She says they're standard canvases bought from Loxley so nothing unusual. It means an 18/19mm rebate is needed to end up flush and can I find something or a way of doing it? Nope, I seem to be missing something somehow.

I've been looking at various ways I could achieve it (using R&H), but failing. This is what I'm thinking should be the approach I was wondering how others achieve it.

All help, views and opinions gratefully recieved. Thanks in advance.

Use a moulding at 90 degrees to the one you've chosen.

This has a 22mm rebate, so you can put 4mm MDF in the bottom and then the 18mm canvas on top. 48mm wide, less then 11mm rebate gives you 37mm width.

SW9597, BTW, just in case you can't see uʍop ǝpᴉsdn ʇᴉ pǝuɹnʇ I sɐ

Thank you Jamesnkr. Yes I could see it, thanks. I've realised I'm working to their old catalogue where you had to measure off their drawings (which I always thought was....). They've got a website now with the measurements on... I had the wrong dimensions on SW9597... !!!

R&H do a simple square section F10 which is 22 x 48mm. All you would have to do is to fix a sheet of MDF to the back,
or a strip of timber (on the same page) and pack it to bring the canvas to the desired height.

btw.... There are some timber merchants who will mill stuff for you at not a lot of cost.
I had some done by my local Jewsons once and it was good stuff. Softwood is the most cost-effective,
but make sure you ask for the good grade not the 'construction' stuff. This is a simple section with
no tooling-up costs so it's not rocket surgery.

** My stuff was milled from a 3" x 2" blank and needed three passes. It was very smooth and hardly a knot.
Whats more, one piece was 7m long.

Thanks @prospero, really interesting, I'll investigate. Mind you, 7m!!! Blimey, I need a bigger workshop.

I needed a bigger car.

I thought something was a bit odd...

Jamesnkr wrote:This has a 22mm rebate, so you can put 4mm MDF in the bottom and then the 18mm canvas on top. 48mm wide, less then 11mm rebate gives you 37mm width.

Above is the moulding, screen grabbed from R&H's website. I have confirmed with R&H that the 'rebate' dimension below each illustration applies as shown above and they've confirmed it does. I'm glad to know others are tripped-up by dims too sometimes. I have pointed out to R&H that 22mm - 11mm = 11mm which the drawing in no way reflects.

So clearly this does not have a rebate deep enough for mdf and an 18mm canvas (used upside-down to create a tray frame), so my hunt is still current (though I've yet to follow-up the Jewson suggestion).

I don't believe their measurements, but I do agree I'm wrong; sorry. I think the rebate is 16-17mm deep (working from their diagram). Try this instead:

http://www.roseandhollis.co.uk/?s=a344

No need to apologise James - I totally appreciate you trying to help - and you have helped steer my thinking about the construction so thanks mate.

I tend to agree with you, as in: I've not much faith in their measurements or indeed in their drawings right now (My admittedly 1 year old catalogue has pretty much the same drawing as on their website and it measures 16/17mm)... there can't be that many wrong otherwise others would have raised it. When I order I'll have a natter - they're always really helpful.

If you make it as in the the drawing in the opening post, you will not be able to underpin it, only on at the outer edge, any further in and you will have the bottom of the pin sticking out at the bottom, I think there was a thread about this before, maybe last year

I would just go to the timber merchant, see if they have any 35x18mm timber, use that, cut and join, stick a bit of MDF on the back, keep your cots down if you are being screwed on price

Steve N wrote:If you make it as in the the drawing in the opening post, you will not be able to underpin it, only on at the outer edge, any further in and you will have the bottom of the pin sticking out at the bottom,

Just pin through the board as well.

That won't work if you have clamping on the underpinner as the board will be in the way, on my machine, it will not work unless there is a certain amount of pressure on the clamps

Simple solution could be Lion L1884, ok it's only 30 mm wide but I'd bet your customer couldn't tell the difference without a tape measure at hand

I strongly suspect that you are being ask to copy a custom made moulding, unfortunately this will mean getting this moulding produced to order, which will require a certain size of order to make this worth while and also the delay while you wait for it to be produced and dispatched to your workshop.

I'm sorry to say that this probably is likely to cost more than you may have budgeted for. The only other logical alternative is likely to involve stacking two moulding one inside the other. Again this is workable, but the cost of both materials and labour will probably cost more than you have budgeted for.

Having said all this, I think that the finished frames would look great and might be a good seller to other customers besides your initial customer. Unfortunately, as you have already said that she has beaten you down on price and I think that may make this a non starter.

kuduframes wrote:Simple solution could be Lion L1884

Yes, I think that this must be the one used for her sample! Nice looking moulding too! I don't think that you are going to find a 35mm wide version off the shelf, so she likely to need to settle for this size for the larger pictures as well.

Steve N wrote:That won't work if you have clamping on the underpinner as the board will be in the way

If I wrote 2+2=4 somebody on here would disagree with me just for the sake of it... You must have a peculiar underpinner.

artframer wrote:She's beaten me down on price per unit and I'm beginning to wonder if I'll make anything on it!

How can you quote for something without knowing how you will make it or what the cost of your raw materials will be?

Jamesnkr wrote
"You must have a peculiar underpinner"

Don't think so, it's a Cassese 199MXL, it's a very popular underpinner, it has a safety feature, where if there is no or very little resistance on the clamps, it will not fire a pin, so you can on use it by clamping the moulding or timber.

Top image is of normal set up of underpinning moulding or timber , with the clamps holding the timber in place Bottom image is of MDF / Backing attached to the back of moulding, there is no where for the clamps to hold the moulding or timber as the backing is in the way


Hope this explains what I meant in an earlier post

What an irritating feature.