Building a Greene & Greene Picture Frame

[Music] for my next project i wanted something a little smaller a little simpler now recently john designed a green and green style frame around these vintage patent prints that we sell and the result looks really cool so i thought i'd adapt it now the vintage print that i have is from my hometown but instead of being vertical it's a horizontal so i spent some time with the plans to rework the sizes of the parts for a more horizontal look i still want to keep these cool cloud lift details that are on the rails so over at the table saw i cut the styles and the rails to their final width and after squaring up one end i could use a stop block and cut the two pairs of parts to their appropriate length from here it's time to tackle the joinery [Music] once you have the frame parts cut to size spend a little time to orient the frame so that it's just the way that you like it so i flipped around the parts in different orientations to see what had the best grain and color patterns on here now the cherry that i'm using is something that logan picked up and sawed so there are some definite character marks on here and i wanted to incorporate a few of those so i have the frame set up bottom rail top rail here the way that i like it on the back side i marked a couple of triangles now the plans call for joining these parts with mortise and tenon and i'm going to use a variation on that called a biscuit joint wherein i'm going to cut a slot on the mating edges of the two pieces and connect them with a solid wood biscuit you need a special biscuit joiner machine to do that and i'll show you how it works in just a second so the other thing is is that when this is all assembled i want the front face of these frame parts to be flush so i'm going to use that as my reference surface so i'm going to start by flipping over all of my pieces so that the face side is down the other thing that i'll need to do is to mark where i want that biscuit joiner to make it slot so i've marked just a tick mark on the two pieces right where the center line of that joint is going to be when i use the joiner there's a center line on that and i just align those two and plunge and make the cut while i do that i'm going to clamp it down to the bench top and i'm going to use the bench top as the reference for the biscuit jointer so i'll hold it down against the piece align my two center marks turn it on and plunge to make the cut all right before we can glue up the frame pieces there are a few more steps that we need to take care of the first of those is to make the rabbet on the back side that's going to hold our artwork now for the long rails that dead end into the styles we can do that at the table saw the other reason i want to do that at the table saw is because that's a pretty wide rabbet because of the shaping those cloud lifts that we're going to form on those a little later on so i set up a dado blade and an auxiliary fence and made a few passes along each of those parts to create that wide rabbet now on the styles we don't want the rabbet to be exposed on the ends so we're going to do a stopped rabbet not as easy to do at the table saw but we can do it relatively easily here at the router table i've set up a rabbeting bit to take care of it and i've made a couple of stop marks both at the beginning and the end where i want that rabbit to be so what i'll do is turn the router on pivot the work piece into the spinning bit right where the bit emerges from the fence then i'll run the work piece along the edge and then once the pencil line gets to where the bit enters the fence i can pivot it away it's a pretty easy process just take your time as you go along [Music] after the rabbets are formed there's a little shaping we need to take care of and that's to make those cloud lift details on the top and bottom rail so i have a plywood template here that i'm going to use to both lay out and then flush trim that detail it aligns with the outside edge in this case the top edge and the end then i can just trace it on each side and over at the band saw we'll cut it to rough shape and then head over to the router table and use a flush trim bit to clean up the edge and give me a nice smooth profile the next step in the process is to cut a series of grooves that are stopped on the ends of the two rails as well as the styles and they're going to hold those decorative splines that define the green and green style once again for stopped grooves like that it's really easy to cut those here at the router table now i want to make sure that i get the bit closely centered to the work piece but it doesn't have to be perfectly centered that's because i'm going to use the same reference face the front face on all of the parts so for example on this rail for this end i'll start by passing the work piece across the bit until i get to this stop line now that is three and an eighth inch from the outside edge of the bit for the opposite end of the piece rather than plunging it in i'm going to have to lower it down over the spinning bit so i've made a mark on the work piece at three and an eighths and a line on the router table surface itself that shows the extent of the bit i'll line those two up drop the work piece over and then continue the cut to the opposite end and then i'll show you the setup which is pretty similar for the two styles the grooves for the splines will extend across part of the ends of the styles now in order to do that we're going to need to hold the styles vertically while we route the grooves so i'm going to need to make a couple of changes to my setup the first is that i've lowered the bit to about an eighth of an inch because i want to do this in several small steps the next thing that i want to do is to deal with the fact that being on end this style can get a little tippy so for the first cut i'll just hold a plywood backer piece behind it as i push the work piece into the bit until the work piece comes to my new layout line that i put on the fence for the opposite side just like before we're going to have to plunge it over the spinning bit so what i'll do this time is line up my block so that the stop line on the work piece lines up with that line on the router table showing the extent of the bit plunge it down and then push it across to complete the cut then i just need to raise the bit incrementally until i get to the final depth we're at the point now with all the details taken care of that we can assemble the four main parts of the frame we'll make the splines while the glue is drying to get started here with the biscuit joinery the glue up and assembly is pretty easy i'm going to start by squirting a little bead of glue in the biscuit slots then i can fit a biscuit in each one of those now before installing the rails i'm going to brush on a light coat of glue to the exposed portion of the biscuit this is just to help minimize the amount of squeeze out that i'm going to have to deal with later on once the pieces are fit together i can begin to apply clamping pressure and a couple of things that i'm keeping an eye on is making sure that the joint faces are as flush as possible and the frame is designed to have an eighth inch offset between the top edge or the bottom edge of the rails and the ends of the stiles so i have a aluminum setup block here that i can use and then a micro adjuster here to make sure that that offset is correct once you're satisfied with the offset and the fit of the joints you can dial up the clamping pressure but you don't need to go real high here because you don't want the parts to buckle one last thing a quick check for square then walk away and let the glue dry when last we left our intrepid picture frame it was in the clamps after assembling the four parts now that the glue's dry and the clamps are off what we need to do now is do a little squaring up of some things the first thing that we're going to do is square up the rabbet on the back face of the frame where the artwork is going to go so you'll remember that we did the stopped rabbet on the two long styles here so what we need to do is clean up where the rabbit rabbiting bit can't quite make that corner so i'm going to do that with a chisel here and a mallet i've drawn in some pencil marks here to give me an idea of where i'm going and i'm going to put the spectacles on here the first cut that you want to make is across the grain so i like to line up the back of the chisel with the rail right on that pencil line just give it a sharp hit what that does is sever the fibers here so when i go to make cuts along the grain i'm not going to split out that whole side rail so what i can do is just kind of come in and slice my way down as i go and then i can come back horizontally and clean up where that is so it's just a matter of kind of chopping and cleaning up all right that's kind of what we're shooting for now what i want to do is i'm going to move the hold fast out of the way here is the biscuit was just a little proud of the depth of the rabbit so i'm going to come in with a router plane here and clean up that i'm going to do the same thing over here on my remaining corner then we're going to talk about cleaning up the slots that we made for the splines the second part of our job that we need to do that's going to tackle some squaring things is the slots for the splines that are cut on the top and bottom edges of the frame now you can see what the completed one looks like over here it's similar to what we did with squaring up the routed rabbit however here we're working with two different grain orientations so on this end of the slot we have the long grain of the rail and i'm going to chop down across its end grain on the other side we're working on the end grain of the style so you'll notice that the chisel is going to behave quite a bit differently as you make each of these cuts i find that this end is going to be a lot easier to do than the opposite end but all in all the job takes about a minute or so i'm going to start by lining up right on the end and then coming straight down with a couple of mallet blows and i can come in with the wider chisel registering off the edge of the slot and work my way to that layout line we'll do the same thing over on the other side the splines that fill the slots on the frame are relatively small pieces but we still need to do some shaping here to create this step down effect so that it mirrors the look of how the styles and rails are offset from each other now doing this can be a little bit tricky especially since it feels like your spidey senses are activated by having your fingers close to edges like that so what i'm going to do instead is i've cut the blanks for the splines to their overall size and made sure that they fit snugly in the slots then to do the shaping i'm going to take care of that here at the router table i've made a template out of some hardboard that has that step down look to it on the top side of the template there's a stop on the end and a fence along the back side i'm going to use a piece of double-sided tape here to hold the spline blank in place i can just tuck it into the corner there and press down to handle all the shaping i'm just going to use a flush trim bit now ultimately this bottom bearing on the bit is going to follow along the template forming that shape but comparatively it's a lot of material that we need to remove and i don't really want to try and do it all in one pass so what i'm going to do instead is make a couple of light skin passes along on the bit and then for a final pass have the bearing on the bit ride the template from start to finish before you rush into installing the splines in the slots you want to step back a little bit and use a router and an eighth inch roundover bit and soften the edges on both the front face and the back face of the frame that's going to create that softer rounded green and green style look that we're shooting for here and it's really hard to do that with the splines installed the other thing that i want to make sure that i do is go through and erase my pencil lines from squaring up the ends because again that's harder to sand away once those splines are in place now speaking of the splines when they come out of the router jig they're pretty crisp so you have really sharp edges square ends on it and what i'm aiming for is something that's a little softer and rounder again these are small details so subtle things here make a big difference so i've rounded the ends and then softened these long edges i'm not going to try and set up a router bit for that i could just use a sanding block so i'll just take the the spline and then just kind of eyeball a round over on there what you're looking for is something that feels good to the hand and also looks good as well now to round the ends i'm just going to do almost like a striking match stroke here again just kind of go until it looks good then the final thing is to take care of this kind of sharp shoulder as it transitions to the lower section there we go that looks good to me to install them i'm going to run a small bead of glue on the inside of the slot then i want to use a little paddle on the end of the glue brush to get glue on those long grain surfaces set the spline in place and just drive it home with a mallet there we go quick do the other one here like i said it's a subtle detail but it makes a big impact on a frame like this the other detail that we want to add on our picture frame is a set of square button like accents to the front they look like a pegged mortise and tenon joint but the emphasis really here is on its aesthetic look so what i've done is marked a corner location all the way around on the frame and then what i want to do is create a little square hole it sounds tricky but there's kind of an easy work around for it now what matters here is getting that recess as square as possible so what i'm going to do is use the chisel from my hollow chisel mortiser set just the outer chisel part because it's perfectly square and exactly the right size that i need and i can line up the prongs on that mortise chisel with my layout lines and then give it a couple of hits with the mallet so you can see what we've done here is we've perfectly outlined where that recess needs to go now i'm going to come back with a chisel that matches the width of that hollow chisel and kind of connect the dots on the corners and get those layout lines a little bit deeper to remove the waste i'm flipping the chisel bevel down and just kind of wiggling my way along to pop out these little chips of waste there we go i'm shooting for something about three thirty seconds an eighth of an inch deep here just because i need to create a registration point for those buttons i don't really need to go down too far it's pretty simple process and in short order you'll get all the way around the frame all right after making the square recesses we need to make the plugs that are going to fit in there they're going to be wee little things so what i want to do is actually start with a much larger blank because it's just going to be a lot easier to work on if you have a couple of blanks it can speed up the process quite a bit so what i'm going to do is soften each end of the blank here i can just clamp it in the vise and i'm just going to use a sanding block with some 120 grit sandpaper and kind of quickly grind away a slightly domed surface on that uh blank all right to smooth things out and refine it i have 180 grit sandpaper adhesive back that i've just folded over on itself and i'm going to use it in a shoe shine motion just to kind of take the edge off from using the sanding block with the coarser paper again this is one of those things where it's entirely by eye and what looks good to you once it's all set and i think i'm okay with that i want to cut it to size now something tiny like this at the miter saw or the table saw is just asking for trying to sort through all the sawdust in the bottom of the saw and try and pick out your little piece so i'm going to use a miter box here and i've made a pencil mark right on the table of the miter box that i can just line up the end of my piece i'm going to use a japanese saw here and just quickly buzz these to length all right to gloom in place i'm going to use uh the quick and thick because i don't want it oozing around here and i just need a little bit in the bottom of the recess and just press those guys home then i'll come back and clean up any squeeze out and then we'll take care of some of the final details before we're ready for finish on this we've come to the best worst part of the project everything's done and all glued up all the details are in place and you're just about ready to apply finish and it's usually at this stage that i kind of jump the gun and put finish on before i'm really ready so it pays to take a little extra time and just double check all of your surfaces you know like make sure some of the areas around like where these plugs went in place you know that there's no extra glue globs or pencil marks or things like that that you don't want locked in once you put a finish on it now one of the things that i've done especially since we're going with kind of a softened relaxed look on this project is to just take some fine sandpaper and even though we routed the edges just go over them again and that helps ease them and turn them away a little bit from a machine made to something that looks just a little bit more a little bit more human and a little more of a softened irregular look once you're done with that then you're ready to start on the finished process you know one last thing on surface prep throughout this project i've tried to go over my edges and keep the face of it in a smooth sanded state so that once i get to this point there's not a lot of heavy final sanding that i need to do it's more of the cleanup stuff so for the finish on here i'm going to use a gel polyurethane this one's from old masters what i like about it is that the polyurethane is going to bring out the natural colors in the cherry it's going to darken these plugs and splines and really give it a nice look and it's going to allow the cherry to age to that reddish brown that we all really want being a gel means i can control the product as it goes on so it's going to be a little bit easier to do i'm just going to use a foam brush to apply it we're going to go kind of heavy on the application especially on these parts where you can see and i can't and here's where it's the best part because we really get to see as the oil in the gel polyurethane hits that cherry and starts to soak in where it's bringing out those colors and grain patterns and mineral streaks all that kind of stuff all right once you have a good application on there we'll need to go back and wipe it down just to pick up all of the globs and drips and stuff like that but it's also going to help us even out the sheen of the finish here so we have a nice level coat and here's really the beauty of working with gel polyurethane is because you can just keep working at it and not feel like you're going to take too much off or that it's going to dry on you too quickly that it's just going to be too late so there's plenty of time here to work all right now we're going to let this sit and apply a second coat tomorrow just to build up the finish now unlike a straight up oil finish this will allow you to build up a nice shine and a thicker finish as you want for something like this where it's a little bit more relaxed feeling i'll probably just stick with two coats maybe add some wax on the end of it and then it's ready for the artwork like i said at the beginning the wood i chose for this definitely had some character to it and the polyurethane is really bringing out those unique features of this material so also like an oil finish when you're done with your cloth you want to spread it out lay it out flat so that it can dry to avoid any chance of combustion so we'll come back when i have this all ready and the frame mounted here's the completed frame i got my print installed and i think it turned out really great i love the look of the cherry on here and the various mineral streaks and marks that go on from that uh urban tree that logan took down and i really like the accents in wenge both on the plugs and the splines it adds a fun little detail to it and i like how this transformed from the vertical from the original version of the frame into this horizontal format now i know you're going to want to ask for the specific sizing and i can do that but here's what i did is i kept this original cloud lift profile and sizing exactly as it appeared on the plans and then just stretched out the rails and shortened the styles to suit the print that i was looking for here so i hope you enjoyed following along on this build if you want to build one of your own you can find the plans for it at woodsmithplans.com and i'd love to see your version thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Woodsmith

Views: 10,971

Keywords: Woodworking, DIY, How To, furniture, making, building, Woodworking Tips, Tools, Kreg, Kreg Tool, Tablesaw, Table saw, Build, Woodworking Plans, Beginner Woodworking, Easy Woodworking, Cheap Woodworking, Woodworking Tricks, Free Woodworking Plans

Id: B1VTVlM8ZYQ

Length: 29min 4sec (1744 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 18 2023