The Framers Forum

Scroll down the general discussion forum and you'll see my topic enitled 'My Story'

I ended by asking you all to share your story, I'm sure you all have some interesting ones, but I got NO takers

I did the same on the American site - The Grumble - got about 80 replies, search for it 'Why are you a framer' it is a BRILLIANT read! (I'll post it soon if no-one else does, look at the time!!!!)

Come on, please spill, HOW DID YOU BECOME A FRAMER - .....???

I reckon you are all dyslexic (please tell me I spelled that right) FARMERS....

Open up guys ..... SPILL ......... SPILL ........... SPILL

Click here to read how some others became framers

Perhaps it will inspire you to tell us how you did?

http://www.thegrumble.com/ubb/ultimateb ... 155#000000

I always wanted to be a farmer!
Roboframer - We are a bit shy compared to the yanks.

I came into framing from a commercial graphic arts background - My younger brother had been running a framing business - I went into partnership with him - stayed as partners for a few years untill he decided to go in another direction - have been framing now for 15 years - used to have staff - now its only wife and me and the CMC - sack wife on regular basis - am in love with CMC - have to grovel to wife as CMC cant cook. Gallery workshop in an old pub in Tetbury - sell very country oriented prints in this normally busy market town. Think of myself as very lucky to be able to go to work with a smile on my face - even the drive to work is nice - as long as I dont get stuck behind a tractor - which reminds me - farmings changed since I was a boy - and I wouldnt want to be a farmer now - in fact, most of the farmers around here seem to run alternative businesses - dont see many cows anymore - lots of pheasants. Hope that helps kick off your challenge - doubt you'l get eighty framers to reply though.

Hi there,

anoter post to get your ball rolling.

I was in the timber business for about 10 years. It was a family business set up by my grandfather at the end of the 2nd world war. When they used to bring the timber into the city centre on a horse drawn barge. We, however were fully automated. Local government decided they didnt want a big, dust and noisy factory in the middle of town. We decided to knock the factory and build appartments and offices. The business re-located on a part time basis to a farm yard. This was grand, but between everything i was only working 10 - 20 hours per week.

A friend of mine is a painter and asked if i would be interested in framing, and i decided to look into it. I made my first frame with a circular cross cut saw and a few nails. It was the funniest looking frame i ever did see!!!
Right i said, off to a wholesaler for me and bought a morso and underpinner. The learning curve was steep, and i'm still on it. Doing my GCF at the end of this month. Still working from a garage at home, but going from strength to strength..

Most of all i love it, especially doing a difficult job well, very satisfying !!



Steve

OK then. You'll be sorry you asked....

I used to work offshore for a diving company. much of the work was seasonal, or "waiting on a phone call" so there was always plenty of spare time (they called it "leave" - I called it daytime telly) and I had picked up, of all things, an old letterpress printing press to play with my spanners on in the shed. I just like mechanical things. Since then I progressed to building a plane (spanners are your friends, but they are addictive) and now I'm relegated to dismantling my motorcycle...

When the press finally got working, pure chance saw me finding some old printing blocks of local scenes and landmarks, so I went into the amateur "repro" prints business, just as a hobby. A printer in Helston (thats Merlin John's ears pricked up now) also made frames, and he cut me some mounts on an old hallard/arquadi mount cutter. I imagine he has long since retired, as the shop's empty nowadays. Eventually he me to buy a mount cutter myself (in hindsight because i was probably a troublesome customer) and suddenly the dining room was swamped in mountboard offcuts, and the usual detritus of the "home framer".

Then the chap (garage framer) who had promised to do some frames for me fell ill, and I was stuck with an order for 14 framed repro prints.

It was time to get a mitre saw.... then the slippery slope began.

In a fit of pique (well, i was at that funny age) and under the comletely ridiculous illusion that we didn't need a lot of money to live on (the optomism of your early thirties, eh) I threw in the towel on the diving industry and its first class air travel, good money, good cars, private education, medical insurance, world travel and duty frees..... and we took on a market stall

That was an eye opener. By the time the year was over we both had holes in our shoes and hypothermia.

a year later we moved to our first shop - mitre saw and all.

Then I picked up a second hand 1974 Morso (still going strong) which had made less than 1000 frames and had been left to rust in a barn for years. (out came the spanners, jizer and parafin -actually i think we soaked it in jet A1 fuel from the bowser at lands end aerodrome for a week to loosen it up -well it is rural cornwall...)

I joined the FATG. Very pleased with the guild, cant fault the standards and ideals and help and free advice that was always available (and often called upon and gratefully received). Never took the GCF, but thats more an inferiority complex -in case i fail to meet the standards. But always try to live up the standards -in the long run it pays off.

Staff appeared, and went, like they do. We played at the "production volumes" game -great if you like a big turnover, but lets face it, who wants a small scale frames factory, chasing overdue accounts, and listening to whining gallery owners who cant afford to pay for what they ordered and are always trying to chisel two pence of the price of a mount?

A keencut 4000 arrived (still going strong)

seven years later we moved shop again.

Website business takes off as well - computerised mount cutter arrives - going strong, in an "American-Fridge", indestructible, relentless, no complaints, idiot proof, predictable, you-cant-bend-it no-need-to-mend it "rolling thunder" sort of way. (yeah, its a wizard lol) If Morso made mount cutters......

a year later we moved again.... to where we are now. And after almost fifteen years, its time for the EH power morso while we still all have some knee and hip joints left.

Lots of ups and downs along the way. Winging it and learning on the hoof. But met some nice people (and some who could only be described as a waste of oxygen) along the way.

I dont know when I reached the point where I felt we could frame virtually any job that came in with confidence, but it took a few years.

In the meantime, whilst building up the business, we sold our house, moved to a small cottage. Ten years later we sold the cottage (which was heated the entuire time by two woodburning morso stoves, that used the chippings from the morso cutter) and moved back int oteh same road, and an identical house that we had sold ten years earlier -just a quarter of a million pounds difference in the price in the intervening years.

Yeah we came a long way (not) right back where we started from. You have to laugh really.

See, you really shouldn't have asked!

Kev.