My dear old neighbor just lost an eye from a woodworking accident. So it was with some trepidation that I began the process of framing.
There are slabs of wood lying about everywhere on our land. We had two bouts of housebuilding, both of which were in the era when my children were young and we had far too many projects to keep track of. Carpenters, seeing my chaotic situation, made their own decisions about where to put scraps.
In the first year of having an empty nest (sort of, we do have a young boarder living with us), I've been poking away at the piles. Any slab of wood that's around 1 1/2" thick and not so wide that I would have to put it to an Important Use, is fair game. Unless it's hopelessly rotten, and even then, I try.
I wash it off and then run it through the planer. Because I don't always get all the nails out, my planer blades are dinged up, but because I live in an isolated place, I can't just pop out to get more blades. Instead, I run the boards back through the other way around.
Then, I set the blade on the table saw to rip 1/2" boards from the stock. This is an edgy business (no pun intended) because table saws account for zillions of chopped-off fingers every year. I wear a chainsaw helmet as a combined ear protector/eye shield, but my fingers are out there in the open. I can't use a pusher with some of the unwieldy boards that I have, so I just breathe mindfully and try to stay hyper-alert.
Once the boards are ripped, they go through the planer again.
Next, I hold them up against the finished painting's edges, mark where they should be mitered, and use the chop saw to get the ends at 45º. You would think I could simply use a template, but no. Each 24x 18" painting is off by as much as 1/4".
Then, I start the compressor and use the nail gun to set the frames against the paintings with little brads. A small % of these nails suddenly take it into their heads to turn 90º and so I have to watch my fingers as I work. They punch tiny holes into the canvas, and so far I don't know what to do about that. I don't have a good enough wire cutter to nip the brads off flush, and I can't find my nail punch to drive them up back through the canvas frame and the picture frame. So, these get set aside so I can address them after the next visit to the mainland and a hardware store.
And that's what I did yesterday. On the weekend, I'll sand and varnish the frames.
There are slabs of wood lying about everywhere on our land. We had two bouts of housebuilding, both of which were in the era when my children were young and we had far too many projects to keep track of. Carpenters, seeing my chaotic situation, made their own decisions about where to put scraps.
In the first year of having an empty nest (sort of, we do have a young boarder living with us), I've been poking away at the piles. Any slab of wood that's around 1 1/2" thick and not so wide that I would have to put it to an Important Use, is fair game. Unless it's hopelessly rotten, and even then, I try.
I wash it off and then run it through the planer. Because I don't always get all the nails out, my planer blades are dinged up, but because I live in an isolated place, I can't just pop out to get more blades. Instead, I run the boards back through the other way around.
Then, I set the blade on the table saw to rip 1/2" boards from the stock. This is an edgy business (no pun intended) because table saws account for zillions of chopped-off fingers every year. I wear a chainsaw helmet as a combined ear protector/eye shield, but my fingers are out there in the open. I can't use a pusher with some of the unwieldy boards that I have, so I just breathe mindfully and try to stay hyper-alert.
Once the boards are ripped, they go through the planer again.
Next, I hold them up against the finished painting's edges, mark where they should be mitered, and use the chop saw to get the ends at 45º. You would think I could simply use a template, but no. Each 24x 18" painting is off by as much as 1/4".
Then, I start the compressor and use the nail gun to set the frames against the paintings with little brads. A small % of these nails suddenly take it into their heads to turn 90º and so I have to watch my fingers as I work. They punch tiny holes into the canvas, and so far I don't know what to do about that. I don't have a good enough wire cutter to nip the brads off flush, and I can't find my nail punch to drive them up back through the canvas frame and the picture frame. So, these get set aside so I can address them after the next visit to the mainland and a hardware store.
And that's what I did yesterday. On the weekend, I'll sand and varnish the frames.
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