Music is an important part of my life. I don’t have the talent to actually play an instrument, and as my grandmother once said to me, “You couldn’t carry a tune in a bushel basket.” I don’t even lip sync well. In spite of . . . or maybe because of that, I appreciate talented musicians.
My tastes deviate from the mainstream. I’ve commented on this blog about having found great radio stations on our Alaska trip, something seriously lacking in Phoenix. That wasn’t always the case however. In the early part of the 70’s under Bill Compton’s leadership, KDKB was a station that had a ‘free form’ radio format. That was a radio style from San Francisco’s ‘hippie’ era. A set of music might contain The Beatles, followed by a classical cut, followed by Jessie Winchester, followed by someone obscure. Some of the sets were theme based while others were dependent on the DJ’s mood. It was KDKB that introduced me to Leonard Cohen and Leon Russell, both of which we lost in the past weeks. Today’s commercial and computer generated radio stations don’t teach anyone about music.
If you followed folk music, you knew the songs of Leonard Cohen. Numerous artiest covered his songs; Judy Collins to U2. His voice was an off-put to some, but I found it gritty and honest. Besides, the songs weren’t lullabies.
It was March 1976 that I attended my ‘best ever’ concert at Phoenix’s Celebrity Theater. It’s a 60’s holdover theater in the round where the stage slowly spins and most of the audience is close to the stage. Because of its size, the acoustics are easily overwhelmed by amplification (Larry Gatlin was the example I remember), but it works for an intimate group like Mr. Cohen’s. It was the last stop on his tour, so all the road’s technical bugs were worked out and the performers were relaxed. Each song brought enthusiastic applause and there were multiple curtain calls. After clapping till our palms blistered, Mr. Cohen returned alone to the stage and apologized that he had no more songs. Then he explained, “This is the last stop on our tour, and we too hate to see it end. We have nowhere to go tonight. Would you mind if we did the show again . . . from the beginning?” As I already said, the theater is easily overloaded with loud noise. The second show was even better than the first; I think it was because we knew we were witnessing something special. The concert finally ended a 3:18 am.
Leon’s music I enjoyed on KDKB, but never enough to run out and pick up an album at the time. A couple of years ago, I was flipping through the used record bins at the record store and happened across one of Russell’s albums in the ‘R’ bin. I thought to myself, “This was part of my life.” It was only three dollars, so I bought it. When I got it home and put it on my system, I was at first amazed at the production quality. Then the music started to flow it disappointed me that I’d waited so long to add it to my collection. Only recently I read about his career and how he contributed so much to the music industry.
It’s sad for me to look around to find those who’ve joined me on my life’s journey are falling to the wayside. It’s inevitable, I guess. If you’re a reader from a younger generation, none of this must seem important to you. Too soon, you’ll find people who influenced you will be gone from your life and you’ll find your immortality vaporizing (also, take care of your teeth).
Friday night is the night that the Queen lets me enjoy my scotch and listen to my music. She doesn’t have the patience to sit, listen and study the albums, so she either goes to the library or out to her girlfriends. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. In addition to cooking a rotisserie turkey breast, I told Anne that my chore for the day was to assemble and tune the turntable. I already know Friday’s play list.
Murphy’s Law strikes again (you really didn’t see that coming?), and as a result, my three frames turned into two. I’m generally pleased with how they came out, but as you would expect, there’s room for improvement. It’s that strive for perfection that keeps us going.
In the last post, I had concerns about getting the size right, because I already bought mats and glass cut to 28×20 inches. I could shave a little off of the mats, but not the glass. I wanted them to drop in the ¼ inch rabbet, but not be too sloppy. Figuring out the cut length of each side was straight forward. If you managed to stay awake in high school geometry, you’ll remember that the sides of a rectangle add up to 360°, so the four corners are 90°. The cut angle on the frame ends is half that, or 45°. The geometry teacher also went off on something called The Pythagorean Theorem, you know, the square of the long side of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.
By now I’ve made Queen Anne’s eyes roll into the back of their sockets. Don’t worry, you don’t need to know any of that, nor do you need your calculator with a square root key. Just remember that 45° is the magic number where both short sides of the triangle are equal. Since the width of my frames from the rabbet to the outside edge is exactly ½ inch, I need to add ½ inch to the length . . . at both ends. In my design, the frames outside dimensions are 29×21 inches. Since I wanted them to fit loose, I added another 1/32 inch.
Now that I had all the calculations out-of-the-way it was time to cut some wood. The first thing it did was to set my saw’s miter gauge to . . . 55°, and made two 29 inch cuts. Then I laid them out on the table, and like a dork, I tried for fifteen minutes to figure out why they weren’t square.
After I discovered my mistake, I thought that I could salvage the two cuts by cutting them again for the short side. About my Incra miter gauge; . . . it’s very precise with stops that can be set to 1/10°. I’ve added a Incra fence to it that helps me make repetitive cuts, but it’s kind of thick and its measuring tape pivots in front of the miter gauge, so it needs resetting each time the angle changes. It’s simple enough to do; I just set the stop to 10 inches, cut a piece of scrap wood, measure the actual cut length, and then adjust the tape to match.
With the Incra miter gauge and fence, it’s easy to make accurate repetitive cuts. The trick is getting the set up right in the first place.
Now, I’m already recovering from one mistake and I’m mentally beating myself up, so I’m not thinking about if I change one thing, how it affects another, and I’m rushing. I set the miter gauge to 45° and double checked it and made sure all the fine adjustments were set to zero. I set the stop to 10 inches, grabbed a piece of scrap off the rack and began my test cut. As the blade goes through the wood, I notice that my brand new Tenryu carbide blade is also cutting off the corner of my Incra aluminum fence. At 55° the fence cleared the blade, it didn’t at 45°. Fortunately, the blade went cleanly through the aluminum without exploding, but I’m sure it took a beating in the process.
Notice the 45 degree angle cut on the gold fence. It wasn’t there a minute ago. Fortunately, the carbide tipped blade took the cut in stride.
I had to take a moment and step back for a breath and a few well placed words normally spelled with symbol keys. When gathered, I adjusted the fence to clear the saw blade, and cut another piece of scrap. After correcting the tape, I was ready to shorten my first two pieces. I ran the piece through the saw and realized that I held it against the fence backwards. Now it was too short.
Believe it or not, I actually did wind up cutting the rest of the pieces correctly. Once I had everything set it was easy. I just had to focus. And with the fence stop, I could take a cut off a longer piece, by cutting the first miter, flip it over and cut the other side. They came out perfect. As I said, I wound up with enough for two frames and some pieces I can eventually use for smaller frames.
The jigs that I have let me glue up two corners of the frame at a time while the other corners are held in place with right angle aluminum corners. A better solution would be a clamp that added lateral pressure while holding the miter in place.
The next step was to glue the four sides together. I have some aluminum jigs to hold the corners together at right angles. They work really well except they don’t exert any lateral pressure to the joints. The glue has to set up without pressure. End grain joints are not very strong, so I planned on making a spline joint after they dried. That would be strong enough to hold the glass.
This jig was the first that I made a couple of years ago. I didn’t expect that it would take this long to use. It holds the frame upside down so a slot is cut into each corner.
After getting a table saw a couple of years ago, the first jig I made was one for cutting spline slots in frames. It’s simply two pieces of plywood attached to a couple of mesquite runners. It holds a frame (or box) at an angle so you can run it through a saw. Then you cut wood in 1/8th inch slices and glue them into the open slot. After they dry, you trim off the excess, sand and finish. Since this was the first time I used it, I set the depth of the saw blade too deep. It needs to be less than the thickness of the wood piece you’re slicing. I was using standard one by (4×4), so I shouldn’t go any deeper than 5/8 inch into the frame.
A piece of wood, cut to the thickness of the slot, is glued in the corner to reinforce the joint. After it dries, the excess then trimmed and sanded flush.
Finally there’s the finishing fiasco. I wanted to have my frames ready for the Museum Show last week, so I used materials on hand. I wanted a black stain with a clear top coat. The local hardware only had oil based stains on hand and I use normally use a water based finish coat, so mixing the two isn’t possible. I decided I could spray some shellac and lacquer for the last finish and bought a couple of cans of both. When I put a coat of shellac over the black stain as a sanding sealer, it looked good . . . until I started sanding it. The sandpaper took off the shellac and most of the black stain. It looked retched.
I didn’t have water-borne black stain, but I did have a very dark brown. I mixed it with the acrylic sanding sealer in a one to one mix and brushed it on the frames. After it dried, I tried sanding it, and even that quickly got down to the base wood. The stain hadn’t penetrated the poplar enough to keep the color during sanding. As a last resort, I applied two coats of the colored sanding sealer letting the frames dry after each coat.
On close inspection, they look awful, but are good enough at a distance. Fortunately they weren’t lit up with a hot spotlight at the show, so they looked good in the dark. After the show, we hung the framed prints in the bedroom where they look just fine.
Well, . . . they’re finished until I get the process under control and make better ones. I wouldn’t sell this pair, but as prototypes, they do what I wanted . . . raise the print away from the wall and simply set off the image.
I’m going to try another type of wood on my next frames. I’m thinking about birch or alder. They’re in the price range of poplar and neither of the former has the green streaks of the latter. I’m leaning towards the birch, because I understand it’s easier to work with than the maple I’ve worked with in the past.
In my last post, I talked about getting some framed prints ready for a Jury Review. I had three frames that I repainted and printed the images to fit them. Although they came out nice and I got a positive comments about them, I’m not really satisfied with store-bought frames. They chip and dent rather easily and the wood they used is hard to re-finish. Besides, the ready-made frames don’t come in the format that I want to use for some of my 16:9 landscapes.
Since I have woodworking tools, I’ve decided to try making my own frames. I’m relatively new to woodworking, but after a few YouTube videos, I convinced myself to give it a shot. The worst that can happen is that I waste time and a couple sticks of lumber.
I think photograph frames should be simple and not upstage the art. I like the thin metal kit frames, but on a large image they‘re out of scale. I also want the image to stand away from the wall, and not be on the same plane. I want a black color, but with some grain, so I want them stained and not painted.
Out of the three pieces of poplar that I had, I was able to cut six lengths for my frames. That should be enough to assemble three frames.
I had several pieces of poplar left over from other projects so I pulled them out and began milling them to size. To keep the frame simple, I used the ¾” edge for the front face and cut uniform strips 1 ¾” wide. The next step was to route a ¼ rabbit for the glass, mat and backing to sit in. Finally I rounded off the front faces with a ¼” radius. With the pieces all cut, I put a black stain on them today.
I want the framed image to stand away from the wall, so I cut the pieces deep with a generous rabbit.
I’m going to give the stain plenty of time to dry, so I set them aside until Friday. Then, I’m going to cut the angles to length and glue them together. Since I already have the glass for them, I’m a little nervous that I cut them to the right size. To make sure they are, I’ll cut them a little large at first and sneak up on the final length until they’re perfect. I’ll start by cutting one and when I’m convinced I’ve got the measurements right, I’ll continue with the other two.
This is the poplar with two coats of black stain applied. After I cut and assemble the pieces, I’ll put a coat of sanding sealer and a couple coats of clear finish.
