The Framers Forum

Hi Guys
wanting an unfinished Circular Frame 300x300
anybody?

When I first started framing, there was quite a wide range of circular frames on the market, unfortunately the range these days is rather less. The reason is probably that the volume of demand for certain sizes is not enough to persuade framing suppliers to stock the volume required to place an order for that size with the manufacturer. Also many of today's smaller sizes of circular frames are made of plastic and are no better than what's available in the cheap chain shops.

Unfortunately, this is not very helpful for most of us. For those of us with the right woodworking machinery, it's not impossible to produce something that's hand finished using real wood, but for a small size producing a small frame would be beyond the price that you can realistically ask the customer to pay for it. This where the problem makes this a difficult end of the market for everyone, Manufacturers, framing suppliers and framers, which is also the reason why it is hard to find what you are looking for.

In some cases, you can obtain a larger circular frame and fit a mount into the frame to fill the excess space, otherwise the other easy option is to make a straight sided frame and add a mount with a circular aperture. Sorry to not be much help, but I run into this problem every now and then myself. I offer customers a straight sided frame, with a mount with a circular aperture, or now I have the machinery a customer made real wood frame at an eye watering price. As expected, no one is going to pay the unrealistic eye watering price and no one was expect them to anyway.

Circular or square with a spandrel? I can cut both but the finish is plain ie just a plain plywood profile but good if you are hand finishing I generally make them from plywood for circular panels, rebated or inlay. What rebate depth do you need? I can make them out of arcs that can be joined or that size could be milled out of a glue up of lime wood. It's gets quite involved though so budget may be an issue.

That's right. In 2005, I spent a week training with Pete Bingham and he made a spandrel frame with the spandrel made out of two layers of grey board. I still have this frame. I've never made one like it myself althougth I have made one's with oval, or circular apertures in mounts, but it is a workable solution that makes sense to do it.

I started out with a Keencut oval 6, but I have since then acquired a Fletcher Terry 1100, these are so super accurate that they can be used on MDF, without the blade going off course. So MDF is another option if you have a really accurate circular mount cutter. The option offered in plywood sounds good too!

I'm using a cnc, so mdf is a breeze.

With your CMC, MDF might be an easier option for hand finishin as well, because it will be a uniform surface on the bevel, insted of the lalers of plywood.

Geospectrums cnc will be a great solution and i would imagine better cost wise than what i could do.

If you need harder timber, i can joint boards (i am using 200mm wide oak boards for a door currently, so would only be a single joint) and i make circle using a router with a circle jig.

I could also add profiles to circular frames. I have a ring fence for my spindle moulder which i use when making curves on doors and windows in particular.

Cheers

Nick

The might even be an oportunity for a forum member who has the means to do things like this to offer this sort of service to other forum members. I don't suppose it would be all that cheap to offer such a service, so the prices would have to reflect this, but there is obviously a gap in the market that is not being addressed. There would be more financial viability in the larger frames and CMC facilities would enable really good accuracy as well.

Well I have the CNC so if anyone is interested please get in touch.

( that is CNC, not CMC, just for clarity.)

A flatbed table CNC router is the only way to fly these days to make round or oval frames.

While the following is not a picture frame video, it does show a round routing job in wood.

I’m finding the CNC very handy, I mainly make artists panels on it and a few other sidelines but circular and oval frames come up occasionally. Ill be making a couple from lime in the next few days so I’ll post the results.

If i can help a forum member with machining a profile (i know small runs are difficult to get in particular), feel free to pm me.

I am not going to be advertising services like this, as i am busy anyway, but if aomeone on here needs a small amount of moulding milled, i will try to help if asked.

Cheers

Nick

One circular inlay frame cut from tulip.

Hi Alan,

You might be getting orders for these.
Nice job.

Great job Alan

Peter.

Many thanks Alan for circular frame
Blends In well

Thanks for posting that, always nice to see the final product.