The Framers Forum

Hi there,

I'm hoping to make my first box frame with bare oak spacers to match the moulding, however I'm having trouble finding anywhere that stocks spacers that aren't ayous or similar.

I see a lot of framers with matching spacers of various woods so and wondering if there's an obvious supplier I'm unaware of?

Thanks in advance

Rose & Hollis. Search for fillets. Obeche, Oak, Beech & Ash.

http://www.roseandhollis.co.uk/landing/ ... plainwood/

2nd Rose and Hollis.

Fillets! Who knew...

Thanks so much

I think that it's probably Rose and Hollis only. I make some fillets and spacers, by cutting them from left over moulding scraps from the waste moulding bin, but I don't tend to use Oak because I don't use the surface planer on Oak, because I don't want to dull the blades. Having said that it's quite easy to sand out any saw marks on my bench top belt sander. I really like Oak spacers in deep box frames, as they can look so classy. I also have a hand held electric planer, with a rebating attachment with can be used in conjunction with some pieces of wood as an ad hoc thickness planner, if needed.

Rose and Holis also do a rather big and chunky 12mm x 47mm Oak fillet, which looks useful for cut up to create various smaller pieces of oak. I have various odds and ends of Oak which come handy from time to time. Cradles for object framing can look nice, when made from Oak. I have a very useful range of nylon and polyester tag gun tags, whch are not that easy to see against Oak cradles and this creates a very smart presentation in many cases. Oak can look amazing, when making cradles for object framing. A useful trick is to use the object resting in the cradle to hide a fixing point from view.

My bench top belt sander is also fitted with a sanding disc and an adjustable angle work support table, which makes it very easy to sand a shaped profile to a marked out profile, even when sanding Oak and this proves really helpful much more than I had originally expected. The bests and discs for this sander are producted with various grades of grit and they are very tough and durable making them very effective for sharpening edge tools, when I need to do so. It's interesting that you are making box frames. Nice quality box frames tend to be quite popular with my customers.

I make mostly out of Pine left overs and off cuts. Even the glass, mount board and backing board is often off cuts as well. Customers rarely are just looking for box frames, but they do sell if displayed in my shop windows. There's a fair bit of Physcology in getting them to sell. Customers are often wary of buying the cheap things in the window, so you need a few lower priced items to help to sell the medium priced items. Also some higher priced items, do help to convince customers that the medium priced items are still a good deal. The reality is that all three price levels will sell, without much difficulty.

3rd Rose and Hollis. Their paper wrapped spacers are brilliant too.

4th vote for Rose & Hollis - great company to work with

I fifth that.