How To Make A Picture Frame - 5 Different Techniques

what is up my dudes my name is Eric and I'm gonna show you five different techniques that you can use to make a picture frame good day friends and welcome back yet again for another build thank you for joining me first and foremost I have a sponsor for this video how dope is that so I'm super excited to work with MLCs woodworking on this video I was really excited to team up with them they supplied the router bits in the clamping jigs that you will see me using this video and if you're interested in checking out their products I will put a link down below in the description so make sure you go check them out now so I went ahead and made five different types of joints that you can use to make a picture frame everything from a standard miter joint all the way up through a half flat miter joint which is on the fancy end of things so you can choose which technique that you want to use depending on your skill level your equipment setup or the aesthetic that you're going for so let's get busy so first up is the standard miter joint now I started off everything by milling out material for all of my sample joints now I use material that's somewhere in the range of an inch and a half wide by seven eighths of an inch thick depending on what type of frame you're making you can vary those as you see fit before this standard miter what I decided to do was use the chop saw in order to show you that you can in fact make a good miter on the chop saw chop saw gets a rough name it's more of a construction style tool rather than a fine woodworking tool that's not wholly inaccurate but you can get clean joinery off the chop saw if you take the time to set it up properly and make sure that everything is working smoothly now for this specific joint I decided I was gonna cut the rabbet on the table saw which is very simple operation as long as you take the time to make sure that your blade height and distance from the fence is set up accurately and to what you want now in gluing up a standard miter joint I want to talk about a technique called sizing sizing is when you seal off the end grain pores of a piece of wood by using a glue amalgamation of sorts what I tend to use is just a mixture of yellow glue and water I tend to thin it out by somewhere in the range of 30 to 50 percent I brush on that glue solution and let it dry for 15 to 20 minutes in wallets drying I create something that I call gluing blocks I'm sure they probably have a technical name the technical name very well could be gluing blocks and I just made that up on the spot but anyway the point is it's just two triangles that I glue on to the mitre pieces so that I have direct clamping pressure so I just cut these two triangles out over on the chop saw and then adhere them to the miter itself by using the painters tape in superglue trick essentially I just put two pieces of tape on both faces and then CA glue in between those two pieces and press them together and let that dry and then from there you just glue as normal so I paint on yellow glue clamp the two pieces together and let it drive for somewhere in the range of four to eight hours and after that you have a super strong joint that is perfect for small frames if you're doing anything in the standard picture frame realm this joint is plenty strong if I'm building a table that's going to a client I'm probably not going to use this joint but if I'm doing a picture frame that is just going to be hung on a wall with a piece of glass and paper in it this is plenty strong so don't fret about that now on to the splined mitre so for the spline mitre I actually cut the miters on the table saw which is normally how I would cut a mitre just make sure that you take the time like anything else to set your saw up accurately make sure that you have a good combination square or a digital bevel gauge if that's what you prefer and set the saw up accurately and cleanly now when cutting the spline itself make sure that you reference the outside face of the frame against the fence for both pieces and also make sure that you're using safe techniques to cut the spline so what I'm saying is don't be like me be safe and don't be a chucklehead now the spline thickness is just going to be the thickness of your blade in this case I have a standard thickness 1/8 inch table saw blade so my spline is going to end up being 1/8 of an inch thick and again I cut the rabbets on the table saw just because I cut both of the miters at the same time doing the same set taking the time to get it right and then you have an accurate rabbit now just to show you a variety of ways to glue up these joints I use a corner clamp on this joint I did not size these joints because that spline is creating a strong long-grain the longer in Gulu contact and the only extra step on this type of joint is to pair the spline flush now I cut that off with a saw for the most part and then will come in with a chisel or a block plane and pare it down you can do that on the outside very easily on the inside corner you do have to use a chisel to make sure it is flush but you do have a nice decorative element and you end up with a super strong joint joint number three is the half lap now the half lap is a very straightforward joint you're just removing half of the material off of both faces and then putting together so that they overlap one another the trick to getting a good half lap joint is making sure that you have a spare piece of wood that is milled up to the same dimensions as your other ones so that you can set up the saw accurately now I did make a mistake on this one cuz I just wasn't thinking and I was just doing things very quickly and you see that I set the stop block to the inside of the blade and what this did is it set the shoulder of the piece 1/8 of an inch too far away because I didn't account for the thickness of the blade so don't be a chucklehead like me and make sure that you set the shoulder to the outside or the far side of the blade so that you're not adding an extra eighth of an inch to the length of your half lap now for the half lap I cut the rabbet at the router table for a couple of reasons one to show you a different technique but two because I needed to create a stop to rabbet on the top overlaying piece the rabbet can run straight through that piece of wood but on the bottom if I run the rabbet straight out you're gonna see it on the end grain now here's another place where I was a goofus because I failed to inform MLCs that I needed a quarter inch spiral up cut router bit and so they didn't send me one so I used a old beat-up straight quarter inch router bit you will see that in making the cut with a quarter inch straight bit I got a lot of tear out on that rabbit which you can hide because it's on the back of the picture frame but it's not ideal now after I cut the rabbet at the router table and to get a good clean result visually and so that a piece of glass could fit in there cleanly I had to go in and square up that rabbit it's a simple operation all you have to do is mark your shoulder with a square and a knife and then pare down with a chisel now gluing up a half lap is super straightforward all you have to do is put glue on both long grain faces and clamp straight across the joint I used a spring clamp here you can use whatever clamp you have necessary just make sure that that shoulder is all the way closed and you got a beautifully clean joint joint number four is the half lap miter this is where it starts to get fun so this joint starts off the same as a standard half lap you have to cut the shoulder to half the thickness of the wood from there I set my miter gauge to 45 degrees and I cut the bottom shoulder at 45 degrees then I treat this like a standard half lap again and remove all of that material so removing the stop block to make sure I have a nice accurate cut then all I have to do is make sure that my final cut lines up directly with the bottom shoulder and it should carry through straight to the top and cutting the rabbet at the router table is exactly the same as before I had to make a stopped cut for the bottom piece to make sure that you don't see the rabbet poke through the top and then squared it up with a knife into chisel and gluing up again is very similar to a standard half lap just make sure that the shoulder on your miter closes properly because otherwise it will ruin the entire aesthetic of the joint but this is a really fun joint to practice if you're trying to up your joinery game a little bit it's not super complicated once you wrap your mind around it and you might fall in love with this joint kind of like I did because it's just fun to create these joints alright finally it's time to move on to the actual picture frame project this frame is for my neighbors it will house a piece of stained glass which is a little more than a half inch thick so this is kind of a deep frame and it's consequently a deep rabbet so I wanted to use the rabbeting bit from MLCs for this which is a nice big 1 inch tall bit which can cut up to about 7/8 of an inch deep as well now the benefit to using a rabbeting bit like this is because it's so wide it creates a nice clean because the cutting circumference is so big and even at 3/4 by 1/2 inch it created a beautifully clean rabbit now while I was making this frame I was just looking at it and it was just a big square and it was just kind of boring me visually I wanted to add something to the piece so I decided to create a bead and add that to the frame itself so what I did was I milled up quarter-inch material at the table saw and then I took them to the router table and rounded a bead profile on there so I just used a scrap piece of wood as a pressure piece it creates a barrier between my fingers and the router bit itself so it's impossible for me to run my fingers into the router bit because the router bit is covered by the feather board then I just gave them the light sanding and I assembled them to the frame by using yellow glue and had some CA glue or super glue to spot tack them which acted as a clamp as the yellow glue dried I gave it maybe 10 minutes to rest and then took it to the bench to scrape off any excess glue that had squeezed out with a card scraper now again I use the chop saw to create this joint because I wanted to prove to you all that you can do this even in a real project what I do in this situation is I make my cut very slowly then I set up a stop it's a super rudimentary stop it's just a piece of wood that's clamped to the table and as I make this cut you'll see me cut down wait for the saw to stop and then pick the saw up and remove the piece in order to avoid any flexion of the blade against the miter that I just cut now assembly of this frame was super simple because MLCs sent me their Murrell clamp which is just a band clamp that has different adjustable brackets on it so I have four brackets on this piece so clamping up a square is really easy I could take one off very simply and glue up a triangle very easily I could add four more and glue up an octagon super simply you can put on as many as you like and glue up a dodecahedron I suppose I don't act I think that's a 3d shape isn't it however if you've ever tried to glue up a square frame like this you know that it can be tricky it can be done with some of the techniques that I showed you earlier however it's not easy to keep everything Square and aligned and keep all of those miters closed so using a band clamp like this with those adjustable brackets made it really simple now once the frame had dried it was time to put in the keys now the keys are very similar to a spline except for the spline runs the length of the mitre whereas the keys run across the mitre so you can insert them after you've glued up the mitre so I just have this jig that allows me to cut these keys very simply and I put the frame right on the table saw and cut the keys out so I cut my splines to about five eighths of an inch wide and I just cut them into triangles in order to save some material but you can do it in squares too it doesn't actually matter just make sure that you brush glue on both of those faces to make sure you have good long grain to long grain glue contact on both faces because that is what's giving this joint its strength and then I just tap at home with a little mallet once the glue has had a chance to dry it's time to flush up those keys so I just use a saw to cut off the bulk of the waste and then you can use a block plane or a chisel to flush them up to the frame itself you could even use a block in sandpaper if you so choose it doesn't actually matter how you do it just get it flush so friends that is five different ways that you can make a picture frame all the way from something very simple to something more advanced so just go play and make something continue to challenge yourself and continue to grow find some time to relax or just go make a thing in the shop so it's there's just all kinds of reasons to me so just just go make things and be happy and make the world a better place now again I want to say thank you to MLCs for sponsoring this video it's super dope that they were willing to invest in me as a creator so I would put a link to all of the products that you saw me using this video down below so go check them out maybe like shoot you'd be like hey super dope that you sponsored Eric love to see more of that because that would help me out also speaking of helping me out make sure that you subscribe and hit that little Bell button and leave a comment down below if you want to if you want to stay up to date on what I make and go check me out on Instagram that's where I tend to keep things up to date and friends I will see you in the next video be a warm and well-fed peace my alarm just came up on Google alarms to remind me that Thanksgiving Day is tomorrow guys I know Thanksgiving is tomorrow now gluing up a half lap is super straightforward cuz all you have is to long grain the longer link oh here we go you

Channel: ENCurtis

Views: 121,918

Keywords: picture frame diy, how to make a picture frame out of wood, wooden picture frame, wooden picture frames diy, how to make wooden picture frames, how to make wooden picture frames at home, picture frames ideas, picture frames woodworking, corner joinery wood, joinery woodworking, joinery woodworking for beginners, joinery woodworking projects, woodworking projects, woodworking projects for beginners, wooden pictureframe, how to make a picture frame, erik curtis, encurtis

Id: t3btryYahMg

Length: 13min 57sec (837 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 30 2019