Float framing a small panel

[Rhombus]

Hello.

I'm a studio assistant at an art school and we have just started making frames with the students. None of us are trained framers so my apologies if the question is very basic!

One of our students has a small painting on a wooden panel (20cmx30cm). She wants to frame this so that there is a small gap (2 or 3mm) between the edge of the rebate and the edge of the panel (no overlap, the entire panel can be seen with the frame floating around it). To achieve this I thought we could affix her panel to a piece of backing board which would then sit in the rabette. Is this correct? If so how would you attach the panel to the backing board. The panel is about 3mm thick so I wouldnt want to screw into it. Are there any glues framers use which are secure but would not damage the panel and could be easily removed should the work be reframed at a later date? Also does this type of frame have a name? Does float framing only refer to the use of floater mouldings?

Thanks for your help

Alastair

[Jamesnkr]

I'm a studio assistant at an art school and we have just started making frames with the students. None of us are trained framers so my apologies if the question is very basic!

Talk about re-inventing the wheel... Send somebody on a framing course! You will save everybody huge quantities of time, effort and frustration.

I will let somebody more qualified than me answer that question. I've yet to hear of a properly satisfactory solution - essentially you're asking for magic.

[prospero]

Hi Rhombus and welcome to the forum.


This is a perennial issue that faces framers very often. In fact it faced me on Saturday.

The thing is, that gluing anything to an artwork 'damages' it. It's not that it harms it necessarily. But it's state is permanently
altered from the original. A fine point, but an important one when it comes to value. Who's to know if a students' work might
become highly collectable in the future? But in any case the prime directive in my book is to take the artwork, frame it and be
able to take it out the frame and never tell it's ever been in a frame.

The best way IMHO to float a thin panel would be to attach some wood blocks or strips to the back with glue (PVA woodglue???).
Then pass some short screws though the background board into the screws. OK, you would never get the blocks off again but
the panel/block could at least be removed easily. A compromise, but there is little other choice.

But.......

If the artist had fixed the blocks/strips on before executing the painting, that is a different kettle of fish. The only intrusion
would be the screws which would be acceptable. After all that is their purpose as decided by the artist. It would be the 'original'
state of the piece.

Over the years I've seen 100s of pieces of artwork that have been abused in the framing. People sometimes want things re-framed down
the line and often things are difficult the remove from mounts/frames, or just plain impossible without the services of a skilled restorer.
And the bill from a skilled restorer.

A little forethought is worth a lot.

There are a lot of clever tricks known to framers but when it comes to it we can't do real magic.

[vintage frames]

Pearl glue is reversible - with a little heat, that is. Glue two strips of mountboard to the back of the panel with pearl glue, then when dry glue the whole thing to the backing board. If someone needs to recover the panel then a hot iron should harmlessly release the glue.

[Steve N]

It's not re-inveting the wheel, we have done this many times.
You have not said what the wooden panel is made of, or how thick it is, as it's a art student at a art school lets assume then that it is MDF and around 2-3mm thick, in the past we have just used a spot of PVA glue in each corner on a panel of this size, and glued it to mountboard, before glueing, we normally cut a line around the mountboard just inside of where the panel will sit, so if needed you can pull the panel off the mount and the surface paper will come with it, much easier to get rid of the surface paper from the back of the panel. or you can use Pearl glue as Vintage Frames has suggested.
One thing to look out for is the squareness of the panel, if it's not square or the sides are not straight, the smaller the gap you leave, the more this irregularity will show

[Jamesnkr]

But it's state is permanently
altered from the original. A fine point, but an important one when it comes to value. Who's to know if a students' work might
become highly collectable in the future?

If the work has been done by the artist, as appears to be the case here, then it's still part of the artwork, whether the paint had been put on the board beforehand, or afterwards. Probably.


By reinventing the wheel, I meant trying to teach how to frame pictures without knowing how to yourself ("we are not trained framers" "we are teaching students framing") and thus having to make it up as you go along...

[prospero]

If the work has been done by the artist, as appears to be the case here, then it's still part of the artwork, whether the paint had been put on the board beforehand, or afterwards. Probably.

That point is very moot. There are circumstances where such things are acceptable and not it others.

If you wanted to have Michaelangelo's David mounted on the wall and drilled a hole in it to cement in the big iron bracket
then would the bracket be considered part of the artwork? An extreme example, granted but a valid analogy.

Even if the art is not valuable in a monetary sense it should always be treated with respect. And employing invasive procedures
does not achieve this. OK, if you did glue something down chances are nothing bad will happen. The roof won't fall in.
It comes under the general heading of Not The Done Thing.

[Not your average framer]

The trick with problems like this is to avoid thinking in straight lines. There are always different ways of approaching the various problems which come our way, but it takes a while to learn how to think out of the box.

Being an ex-design engineer, a lot of my ideas come from understanding the different properties of different materials. In this case I am thinking about the fact that some types of wood are dense enough to drill a hole and tap the hole with a screw thread cutting tap and use that thread hole to take a screw which will tighten a little (not too much) onto the item to be held in place.

My idea is to stack two frames one inside the other. The inner frame has some small black grub screws, tightened to the point where they will grip the sides of this panel, while the outer frame hides the screw holes in the inner frame. Is is necessary to ensure that the outer frame can be easily removed to gain access to these screws at a later date, if the need arises to remove the panel from the frame.

I think that the hollow cup ended variety of grub screws available from engineering suppliers would be likely to be the most satisfactory type for this particular use. Normal most grub screws with a black finish have a hexagon socket on the opposite end and will be easy to adjust in this situation. If the inner frame is painted black within the space surrounding the panel, the screws will not stand out very much because the screws are also black as well.

[YPF]

Deleted cos I'm not thinking straight and what I suggested was a load of tosh

If there is an excuse it's because it's late ( for me).

[Steve N]

That is a good solution Mark (NYAF),