Grate Frame

Well, my wife found this old cast iron grate (minus the frame) in a flea market somewhere — I think it was back in Kentucky before we moved to Kansas, well over a year ago. We’re guessing its an old air return grill, but who knows? She wanted to hang it somewhere in our house, but never could find “the right place.” (I’m not the interior decorator at home, she’s got way more decorating sense than I do.) The other day, a light bulb went off in her head and she said she’d found a place for it, but I needed to make her a frame. Her vision was to make a frame like an old-fashioned floor grill might have. She said it had to be about so wide (hold your fingers “this far” apart) and should taper to the outside edge and… the frame couldn’t hide any of the iron in the grill. Well, my idea of simply routing a groove on the inside of whatever frame I came up with disappeared at that since at least half an inch of the outer part of the grate would be behind the wood. So, I ended up cutting rabbets along the inside front of the frame that were deep enough to support the grate (a bit more than 1/4”) and wide enough to not show behind the grate. I drilled some holes in the backside of the frame and matching shallow holes into the backside of the edges of the grate which then got tapped (with a bottoming tap) for 8-32 FH machine screws. Only about 4 or 5 threads holding on each screw, but with six of them around the edges, it seemed to be strong enough. I might add that old cast iron grates aren’t exactly flat, square and of uniform thickness —so some “tweaking” was necessary when assembling this. The frame is made from QS white oak, stained and finished with poly. (She was thrilled with the final result, BTW.)

-- Howard - "Time spent making sawdust is not deducted from one's lifetime." - old Scottish proverb