The Framers Forum

How do you achieve this finish? I am not happy the miter’s on a large L tray frame and want to sand down level and repaint. I have just tried painting this a smaller frame with similar grain showing through but not really getting the affect as the Lion one in the photo


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I find spraying obeche gives that result. I spray with a gun not from a spray can.

As Louisesimon said, you will get the best finish if you can spray on the paint. However there is something else to consider here. The paint finish you show has been achieved by using a high solids paint in order to achieve the finish in one pass. That was on a machine. If you use a cheaper domestic paint, there may not be enough solids (white pigments) in the paint to give an even one-coat finish. And if you go for a second or third coat, you start infilling the grain, and that's not really what you're looking for.
So my advice - for what it's worth - is to choose a high quality paint such as F&B and if one coat doesn't do it, then stir in some dry Titanium White pigment - untill it does. You can get the pigment from any good on-line art supplier.
That should do it.

I spay the Valspar trade. It has a high pigment level and I can get similar results. You need to wate it down about 20%. I tend not to get on with the F&B paints as they don't give me the coverage I like.

What is a good spray set up? I do have a compressor and a touch up spray gun which from memory (haven’t used for about years) was quite good. I know you can also get airless spray systems, but have no knowledge or experience of them. I am as I have probably stated before interested in finishing frames myself.


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I've seen some first rate sprayed finishes and would defineately go for it if I had a separate part of the building that would ensure that my normal framing area would remain free from a residual paint spray still in the air. Decent HVLP set up's are quite reasonably priced these days and you should be able to get some good advice about what's worth buying from some of the members of this forum.

You can do it easily with Titanium White artists acylic. (Artist quality - not 'student). You need to dilute it slightly,
but not a lot. Just enough to get it to flow nicely. Basically, dip your brush in water and then take up some paint. If
the paint begins to 'drag', wet your bush again. A couple of coats should do the trick.
You can spray it, but much quicker with a brush.

Let it dry and give it a quick buff with a yellow duster. Waxing it will shine it up a tad if need be.

Sounds good any particular brand of titanium white and where to get it from can you recommend please. since OP I now need to paint some black as well


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Why not fix the problem with the miters first, then you would not need to paint

Couple only slightly raised and i’m probably being too fussy, I think because it is quite a large frame you get a slight twisting and although they look ok as you do them when all four are joined they move ever so slightly I suppose maybe try clamping them instead.
Developing different techniques from experience Im still relatively new to framing.


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Am I guessing that you've made the frame with a Lion moulding, needed to sand down the mitres and now need a matching paint finish? Personally I'd never try to match a factory finish - they use nitro-cellulose paints and would take ages to try make a matching finish. Better to bang the mitres level with a hammer and some wood before gluing.
Better still is to spray paint your own bare-faced moulding. Then you can give your mitres a good work-over without regard to the finish. Buy a few cheap plastic dust-sheets and join then together with some gaffa tape to make a spray tent and then use your small spray gun to see if you like the idea of spray painting your frames. Use the Valspar range as recommended (B&Q) and see how you get on.
Spray guns are very cheap these days and one for paint shouldn't set you back more than £50. Water-based paints are usually applied by the HVLP method - this is high volume, low pressure. Turn down the air pressure to just enough to atomise the paint and adjust the volume of paint to effect good coverage but avoiding too heavy a build. I wouldn't worry about extraction yet.

Ed209 wrote:Sounds good any particular brand of titanium white and where to get it from can you recommend please. since OP I now need to paint some black as well


!-!

Windsor&Newton good as anything. Also Daler/Rowney. Some cheapo brands can be soluble when dry.

The reason I favour brush-applied paint in this circumstance is that it's a textured surface and spray will sort-of
just settle on the surface and may skip the 'trenches'. With a brush you can grind it in.

I also use the brush applied method, but manufacturers of factory finished mouldings don't seem to have a problem with sprayed paint not getting into the texture of the wood. Not having tried spray painting obeche, I'm not sure this is a significant problem, or not.

However, my instincts are that if it works for the moulding manufacturers, i can't see any reason why it won't work for us. There may be a bit of learning the best technique, but unless those on the forum who regularly spray frames and mouldings tell me otherwise, I don't see why it won't work.

Talking about brushed finishes may be missing the point a bit. Ed209 wanted to replicate the Lion moulding finish and if you look at that you can see where the paint has NOT gone into the wood grain. Using a fairly heavy nitrocellulose paint, that is pretty straight-foward. Too much brushwork will drive the paint into the grain and blot it out.
He just needs to experiment a bit and start off with the Valspar paints as recommended.

Im probably going to appear to be a complete idiot here but presumably I have to rough sand the frame first to get the deep grain affect before I paint it either by brush or spay. At the moment the wood is pretty flat as I sanded with 320grit


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use a wire brush on it

Using a copper wire brush is my choice when opening the grain after sanding.

I was not expecting you to need to sand, or wire brush the obeche to get a bit of grain showing through the paint like the picture you posted, obeche does that anyway. If you wire brush it, I would use a brush with bronze bristles like a suede brush as obeche is quite soft and a more aggressive brush like a steel wire brush is likely to produce a more dramatic effect than you want.

Are we getting a bit to far into different ideas and too far away from trying something more basic and practical first? If you've got a scrap bit of obeche handy, perhaps you could get a spray can of acrylic white paint and give it a try to see how it looks before trying anything else. If it's not what you want, then you can try a suede brush, but I'm not convinced that you will need it.

A spray can won't cost much and will save you going to far with other ideas until you know how things are shaping up.

Using wire brushes can give many interesting results but I agree with Mark that it is getting away from the original point. Using an aerosol can is a good way of testing out an idea. Of course you will have more control with a spray gun and that can lead you down a more creative path. Everyone's idea of a good finish can be very subjective, so it's important to experiment. Sometimes it takes ages to get things right but the rewards are well worth the effort.
You mentioned sanding the wood with 320grit. That's the best finishing grit on bare wood. A 180grit is good for leveling mitres and blunting corners and then polished over with the 320grit.