My humble picture frames

With all of the awesome picture frames that have been posted lately, I have to jump in and post the ones I just finished. The Air Force just brought my family and I back from Germany, and we have moved into a larger home than we’ve had up until now. Consequently, I have a couple empty rooms with empty walls. I came across these old depression-era WPA national parks posters… well, OK, I blatantly pilfered the idea from my sister and brother-in-law… and decided they needed some arts & crafts-styled frames. Between my wife and I, we’ve been to every park featured – except for Lassen.

The frames are simple enough. They’re QSWO, of course, with through mortise and tenon jointery. I left the stiles 1/8” thicker than the rails, to give a nice shadow line. I also left the stiles 5/8” longer than they needed to be on either end, and made the tenons with no side cheeks. I’d reconsider that last decision if I were to do it again – that way I wouldn’t have to sweat over-cutting the mortises – not that we woodworkers would ever make silly mistakes like that :^) I pegged the joints with ebony pegs, left them proud, and faceted them with a chisel so there would be no question the frames are “hand-made.”

I sanded the backs of the frames, but finished the fronts “off the plane” to leave some texture. It more or less looks like the grain is raised – you can’t see plane tracks. I honestly can’t remember for sure, but I think “off the scraper” would be more correct. Seems like I did go over them with a hand scraper.

I did go to the trouble of fuming the frames with aqua ammonia, and i’m glad I did. It really made the medullary rays pop. The pop was reduced a little though, unfortunately, with a couple coats of orange-tinted shellac that were necessary to cut the silver-greenish cast resulting from the fuming.

The frames took me about a month’s worth of free time to make, working at my liesurely pace. I managed to dry mount the posters, cut the mats, glass, etc. for all 7 pieces in just 2.5 hours yesterday afternoon b/c the self-help frame shop on post is only open until 5PM. Didn’t want to have to drive my wife’s car to work 2 days in a row. It’s amazing how efficient a good deadline can make me!