The Framers Forum

Evening all,

Very much in need of your help

I'm working with a LJ foil moulding (Hampshire II) which is unfortunately chipping at the cut I think due to the nature of the finish and the profile of the back of the moulding(?). What would be the recommended product and approach to fill these? I am thinking something after joining together to help work it in to the join and make less noticeable.

The moulding is an almost rose gold but can't find a product to match so far.

Many many thanks in advance
David

You'll never get a perfect fix, but the first thing to do is to fill the hole with (fine surface) polyfilla or the like.
You will probably need several layers and if will have to smoothed when it's semi-dry to get a flush blend. A very
careful bit of sanding may be necessary and this might encroach on the surrounding undamaged area.
If you have a scrap piece then run the gold off and see what's beneath. Paint the repair with something the same colour
in Acrylic paint. A few coats until the filler is sealed. Then a suitable colour gold paint or even wax filler and dab it on and
try to 'feather' it in the original finish. When it looks acceptable, stop.

That is a really hard one to fill and re-finish to create an invisible repair. I'm not saying that it can't be done, but it certainly won't be quick and easy! However I can give you some clues.

1. I would fill the missing piece of moulding with two wood filler, such as "Repair Wood For Good".

2. Do you have any left over scraps of this same moulding, which you can use to help to mould a profile for sanding down the moulding to the same profile? This will make it much easier to sand down to produce a seemlessly matching repair. I'm taking about a moulded sanding block and you will need very thin sand paper to make this work and it takes ages to get a good result.

3. If you are thinking that this is going to be something which can be touched in one application of paint, well sorry it does not work like that and it's going to need to avoid excessive build up due to the thickness of the paint applied, otherwise the visible profile of the moulding is not going to be uniform in the area of the repair.

$. Different people will have their own ways of re-creating this particular finish and there is no one way that is right and others which are wrong. It's the final result which counts! The subtile colouring and the subtile mottled effect are not something which I find that I can produce all in one go. Again this I just what works for me and maybe is not works for everyone else. I build the finish up in very thin layers and all the time, I am looking to halve the difference between each layer as it dries and what the original finish looks like.

I am adding colour to a glaze medium and then tinning it down futher before applying each layer. With each layer, I am only aiming to make small changes. Over doing it is the last thing which you want, because it is very hard to reverse mistakes and usually it means going back to the start of all your hard work and starting again from scratch, which often does not work very well either. I got a fair bit of experience doing this sort of thing and in spite of this, there are some finishes, which don't always work out as you want them, even when you have done everything as best as you can.

Sometimes the frame is going to need to be re-made from scratch and there's no way around it. I sorry that I can't be more helpful!

I would suggest recutting with the help of a support moulding such as Lions 9896.

Filling and re-finishing foilled factory finish moulding is often not something that is ever going to work. It is also one of the reasons why I like to produce hand finished mouldings and also stacked moulding frames. This sort of moulding profile is not really one of the best to cut on a Morso. Cutting the last 10mm in very thin slices might work, but even then it might still be a little bit problematic.

Thanks to each of you for your help

I have filled and primed the gaps (polyfilla) now awaiting a couple of different gold paints from lion and amazon to experiment with on an off cut.

Taking the positives...another lesson learned on my framing journey

I'll share the outcome, unless it completely fails and I end up ordering again but on the LJ chop service

David

@dmcgreen

This is just the sort of moulding I would always order on chop. This type of finish plus the profile makes this a complete lottery on a Morso.

If you fill in the gap between the outer edge of the moulding and the fences on the Morso, it always works fine for me. Having said all that, I'm not really a fan of mouldings which have a scooped out outer edge anyway. There are times when stacked underpinning wedges do unexpected things and the scooped out outer edge can be where a slightly off course wedge becomes visible with unfotunate results which write off the frame, which is bad news.

Safe to say lessons learnt re hollow back mouldings.

Good news is, the mentioned champagne gold acrylic paint from amazon finished well over the sealed polyfilla and the (respectfully) fussy customer was none the wiser.

David

WOW, Perfect touch up with first time touching up such a difficult fnish. You did great! Much impressed!