Geeks-R-Us

This project was sort of in the works back in August/September when there were around a dozen frames scheduled to be made for Lisa’s cross stitch projects. Because Lisa had not yet finished this project, this frame was not factored into Picture Frames Galore. This frame is slated as a Christmas present for Lisa’s cousin, Bill, and his wife, Wesley. They are both into Dungeons & Dragons (D & D), Star Wars, Harry Potter, Doctor Who and the like. This cross stitch pattern encapsulates all things geek into one.

Score One for the Mikester
As with the other cross stitch projects, when it comes to picking out colors and wood species, that is entirely up to Lisa. With my slight color blindness, I am not of all that much help. Once Lisa had finished the pattern, and cleaned and ironed it, she wasn’t sure what color combinations would work best. Unlike all past frames, this one would have a mat around the picture to accentuate it, so this made the choices a little more difficult.

The fabric is a bluish green color and the lettering is a bit darker shade of the same color. I looked at it, with my stellar color acuity, and suggested that maybe purple would be a good compliment. I was thinking the frame could be made from purpleheart and the mat would maybe be something lighter. Lisa heard when I said purple and immediately went, “Ooooo”; I knew I had hit upon something.

Lisa went out to Hobby Lobby, the only local craft store that has any semblance of an assortment of mats from which to choose, and picked up a purple mat. Holding the cross stitch over the mat really made the pattern pop. That was definitely the right way to go. Now it was just a matter of what species of wood for the frame. It was coming up on the second Saturday of the month, the one Saturday that Hardwood Lumber and Millwork (HLM) is open, and I suggested we head on down to get what we needed. I was wanting to go back down to HLM anyway since I needed more materials for the mitered frames I messed up earlier. I cut a small piece off of the mat, Lisa rolled up the fabric and we were on our way.

We arrived at HLM not long after they opened, and Lisa headed straight for the sample wall. HLM has a finished sample of most species they carry in stock to get a better idea on how things may look. Lisa really liked the look of the cherry with the purple mat and blue/green fabric. It did seem to be a good combination, so we went over and picked out a decent piece of 4/4 cherry. I also grabbed some 5/4 hickory and some 4/4 poplar while I was at it (for the other frames and other projects).

While letting the wood sit in the shop for a few days to acclimate, we needed to figure out how the frame was going to be constructed. I was leaning away from traditional miters for the moment (the previous batch left a bad taste in my mouth). The loose tenons are a great way to join boards together as well, but I wanted to try something new. I suggested we go with half-lap joints on the corners. I showed Lisa exactly what I meant in Sketchup and she was on board (I just realized that’s a bit of a bad pun).

Things That Make You Go, “Oh Shit!!!”
The cherry board we picked out at HLM was 8’ long, so I had them cut it in half for transport in my truck bed. It was raining a little bit that day, and I didn’t want to have the board get unnecessarily wet. Both sections of cherry looked about the same, so I grabbed one and laid out where to get each frame piece. With this being rough lumber, it’s not always apparent where the best pieces will be, so it’s always a little bit of a gamble.

I cut the board to rough length at the miter saw, which was basically in half again, and took those pieces over to the jointer. The boards were just a shade over 8” wide, so I couldn’t joint a full face flat. I’ve tried using the trick of removing the blade guard in the past, but with my jointer it doesn’t work (plus I’m not a fan of no blade guards on a jointer, for obvious reasons.

I opted to cut off an inch or so from each board at the band saw instead. There was a bit of a cup in each board, so this might help reduce the amount of material lost (I was going for the thickest frame I could get once milling was finished). I rolled my band saw out and got it set up for the cut like I normally do. I started cutting the first cherry board, and after maybe 3” into it...BANG!!!...my 3/4” band saw blade broke.

It was a violent event that I’d never experienced before. The tension control knob on the top of the band saw popped off and landed a few feet away (it’s not attached, but just sits in a slot). Not only that, but the clear window on the side of the upper wheel compartment popped out and landed on the floor as well. Needless to say, this scared the shit out of me and I immediately hit the off button on the saw.

Once the wheels had finally stopped spinning, I opened the upper and lower doors to remove the blade and survey the damage. After checking the blade, it did not break at the weld, but somewhere else along the blade. It broke with such force that the blade now has a bend in it.

This thing was a goner, so I just tossed it in my scrap metal trash can. I checked elsewhere and I couldn’t see any damage. In all honesty, I can only blame myself for the catastrophic break of the blade. I had it WAY too tight to begin with, and I’m surprised it didn’t break when I was resawing all of the cedar pieces from the Garden Hose Box.

A Grinding Halt to Progress
Luckily, I’ve still got the 5/8” blade that came with the band saw so I can get back to work. I uncoiled the blade and placed it on the wheels. I had loosened the tension considerably before I installed this blade to make sure I didn’t destroy this one as well. After setting the tracking of the blade on the wheels and readjusting the blade guides, both top and bottom, I was giving the bottom one a final check and I noticed something odd in the bottom wheel compartment.

There was a small set screw sitting in the corner of the compartment and I had no idea where it belonged. I couldn’t see anywhere that might be missing a screw. I checked the manual and the parts diagrams and couldn’t find anything either. I was at a loss, so I called it a day at that point. I took a couple of pictures of the screw and sent a message to Rikon technical support for assistance. They responded back and told me it looked like a set screw from the motor pulley...great.

It’s really difficult to see these screws, or even try to tighten them, without taking the lower wheel completely off. I removed the blade and busted out the manual to see how to remove the lower wheel. It was surprisingly simple to remove it and I now had full access to the motor pulley. It has two set screws in place, so I’m not sure it came from there. I responded back to Rikon and they informed me that there can sometimes be two set screws, one on top of the other, in each of these holes on the pulley. This was definitely a WTF moment as I’d never heard of something like that before.

I went back into the shop and looked more closely at the pulley and its set screws. I checked for tightness and they were both already as tight as could be, so I’m not sure those came from that pulley. I was at a loss at this point, but I didn’t bother responding back to Rikon. I decided to just reassemble the lower wheel assembly and press on. I retensioned the blade, got it tracking properly again and readjusted the guides one final time. I plugged the saw back in and powered it on. I didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary and everything appeared to be working normally. With no noticeable problems noted, I continued with the build.

Back in Business Again
I set back out to finish cutting the cherry boards so that I could properly run them through the jointer. The replacement blade chewed right through the wood with no problems at all. I went back to the jointer and got one face flattened on each board, then an adjoining edge. It was now over to the thickness planer. I took my time running the boards through the planer as I only wanted to remove enough material to get two flat/even faces. Because of the added thickness of the mat in addition to the acrylic panel, fabric and back panel, I wanted to make sure I had a little more material than normal in case I needed to make a deeper rabbet.

Now that the boards were at final thickness, it was time to head over to the table saw to cut the pieces to final width. Upon further inspection of the boards, there was a section of one of them that had a bit more sapwood than I preferred be visible on the frame, so I planned my cuts to remove most of it. I removed the 80-tooth fine trim/crosscut blade from the saw and installed the 40-tooth ripping blade. After cutting all four pieces to width, I was still left with a decent-sized board for use on other projects (albeit with a bit of sapwood).

I went over the measurements on my Sketchup drawing one final time to make sure I cut the two sets of frames pieces to the correct lengths. With that, I set the stop block on the miter saw station and made my cuts. Unlike with loose tenon frames, where the length of the tops and bottoms have two times the width of the frame pieces subtracted, because these were half-lap joints, the top and bottom pieces needed to be cut to the actual frame width, to include the width of the frame pieces (hopefully that makes sense).

Nowhere to Go But Up
The last thing to complete on the frames, prior to glue-up, was to make all of the half-laps. I took out my digital calipers and took careful measurements of all four pieces. The consensus was that all were at 0.80”. This meant that the depth of cut on the table saw would be 0.40”. I removed the ripping blade from the saw and installed my flat-bottom grind box joint blade. This would ensure I don’t get those little grooves in the bottoms of the half-laps like a typical combination blade leaves.

All of the crosscuts were going to be made utilizing my new Harvey Compass MG-36 miter gauge. After the debacle with my Incra crosscut sled on the previous frames, I wanted to try something else this time around. After getting the miter gauge square to the blade, I grabbed a couple of pieces of scrap cherry that were the exact same thickness as the frame stock, and made some test cuts. I got the depth dialed-in perfectly on the first try (digital calipers for the win there). My setup for the width of the half-lap was just slightly off, so I adjusted my fence and made one final test cut to confirm my settings.

Making all of the crosscuts with just a single blade and miter gauge was quite tedious. It took a number of passes to complete each half-lap, but the results were excellent. There were no grooves to deal with and the cuts were nice and clean. I dry-fit everything together and I was very happy. Some of the joints were proud by the smallest of margins, but that was to be expected (nothing a little sanding can’t fix). At this point, I was going to call it a day. Holding the frame pieces with a kung-fu death grip on the miter gauge caused my arm to get pretty sore.

The One Time You Want Filler in Something
The following day I went back in the shop and prepped all of the pieces for glue-up. I needed to flatten a couple of spots on some of the half-laps, but that was about it. I made a practice run on how I would go about clamping everything together once glue was applied. Satisfied with how things looked, I got to the actual glue-up. Surprisingly, everything went as planned and this was probably the easiest picture frame glue-up I’ve done to date. I thought about doing it in stages, but the half-laps are pretty simple joints to put together, so I just went all in on the whole frame and it was fine. I decided to make that my entire day in the shop and just left the frame there until the next day. My arm was still sore and I wanted to give it more rest.

With the glue fully cured, I removed the clamps and got to work scraping off the glue squeeze-out, which was minimal. I started sanding the front and back faces with the ROS to clean up the joints and remove any further dried glue. This didn’t take too terribly long, even working from 80-grit to 120-grit and finishing with 180-grit, but I did notice there were a couple of very small gaps in a couple of the joints. I’ll address those later.

I busted out the moxon vise and got to sanding the outside edges flat and smooth. All of the edges were nearly perfect as they were, so not too much sanding was needed. I still worked up from 80 to 180-grit, just like the faces, and got everything nice and smooth. The inside edges were next, and they went faster than the outer edges. So far, the easiest frame to sand of all that I’ve done.

Next up was to cut the rabbet in the back of the frame to accept the panels, fabric and mat. I was becoming quite comfortable with this operation at the router table. I raised the bit about halfway and made my first pass. I didn’t do the whole groove with each pass, opting to first make a shallow cut all the way around, and then finishing by going all the way with the bearing riding the side of the frame. This appeared to give really nice results, so I did the same with the final pass at full depth...so groovy, baby (dork).

It was now time to address those really small gaps in a couple of the joints. This would have been an easy fix had I had some cherry wood putty. Alas, I was out of luck on that front. I opted, instead, to try the old sawdust and wood glue trick I’d seen many a woodworker use in the past. When I was doing all of my sanding, I purposely only used the collection cups on my sanders rather than having them hooked up to my vacuum, like I normally do. This allowed me to gather a good amount of the cherry sawdust and mix in some wood glue until I got some good “putty”. I spread the putty over the small gaps and left the mixture to dry while I took a break for lunch.

Baby Got Back
After lunch, I got back in the shop and got to cleaning up the dried putty on the frame. I really made quite a mess with the putty, so I had to go back through the grits again, starting with 80. It took a bit of work, but eventually the frame was back to its state prior to the putty application. Upon further inspection, all of the gaps were filled and the joints looked awesome. It was now time to get the acrylic and back panels cut to size.

I swapped out the box joint blade for my plastics blade and cut the acrylic to size. The measurements for the panels were just slightly smaller than what was marked in Sketchup, but that’s why you measure the piece and don’t go by drawings alone. For the back panel, I wanted to go with something else instead of my usual hardboard panel. I wanted to use some 1/8” plywood for the backing, mainly because I was not happy with the hardboard when it came to put my brand on the back of the frames. The branding iron just didn’t leave a crisp clean impression in hardboard, no matter what I did.

It’s not easy to find plywood of that thickness, but I eventually came across some plywood underlayment at Home Depot. It was exactly what I was looking for, so I grabbed the best-looking 2’ x 4’ piece I could find. One side was a little less desirable than the other, so that would be on the inside and not seen. I tried my branding iron on a scrap piece and it left a beautiful mark...SOLD!!!

Now that both panels are the proper length, it was time to round the corners...standard for my non-mitered frames at this point. I marked the corners with a 5/8” washer and round the corners with the oscillating belt sander with a 120-grit belt. No problems there. I’m getting better with each use of the sander and with each passing frame (that’s a very good thing).

Knowledge is Power
With the final sanding of the edges of the acrylic and back panels, it was time to get this frame prepped for finish. I wiped it down with some mineral spirits to clean off any remaining sawdust and let it dry for a few minutes. Meanwhile, I opened up the garage door slightly (thankfully lovebug season is over) and got my two exhaust fans going. I also installed the carbon filters in the air filtration units to help with the smell from the spray lacquer, my finish of choice on picture frames at this point.

Recently, Steve Ramsey from Woodworking for Mere Mortals put out a video on how to get the best finish when using spray lacquer. This was absolutely perfect timing for this video to come out. I was all in on this video. He pointed out that the wait time on most cans of spray lacquer of 20-30 minutes was a bit excessive, and that really only no more than 5 minutes are needed for a light coat of spray lacquer to dry. Armed with this knowledge, I set out to finish my frame.

The frame was a bit too big for me to use the lazy susan on my finishing station, so I just setup the points on the top instead, with some kraft paper to protect the top. I applied a light coat of Miniwax spray lacquer and left it to dry for a few minutes. In the meanwhile, I sat back and started watching some old episodes of Seinfeld (they’re all old at this point, aren’t they?). After only 5 minutes, the first coat was dry and ready for the second. I applied the same process until I had three coats on the back of the frame. After letting it dry, I repeated the procedure on the front.

Once the frame was completely dry, it was time for the final step in the spray lacquer finishing process, one that I had no idea about until watching Steve’s video. The final step called for taking a piece of kraft paper, wadding it up and using it to buff the spray lacquer. After spraying lacquer, it is typical for the surface to have a slight bumpiness to it. Buffing the surface with kraft paper evens out the lacquer and leaves a finish as smooth as a baby’s butt. It only takes literally a minute to complete this step and the results are remarkable.

Next up was cutting the mat to size. I wanted to be able to do everything on the frame myself, so I bought a Logan 450-1 mat cutter from Hobby Lobby. It’s pretty straight forward to assemble it, and learning how to cut mats is a breeze. There is a little more setup involved for making the bevel cuts, but with little practice I was able to cut the mat to proper size on the first try. I think it came out great.

With the frame now completed, all that was left was to put everything in it. Lisa cut the fabric to size and installed it in between the acrylic, mat and the back panel. After seeing it in all its glory for the first time, I knew we had a winner with this one. The purple mat played in great with the fabric and stitching, and the cherry frame brought it all together. I really could not have asked for a better outcome. Sadly, we will not be able to see the looks on Bill’s and Wesley’s faces when they see the finished piece for the first time. Due to the ongoing COVID crisis, we’ve opted to not go to Maryland for Christmas this year.

It’s hard to get quality photos of finished picture frames in the garage because of the glare of the lights. Trust me, this looks way better in person than in this picture.