Moulding Search

[BobbyJ]

Hi, can anyone please help? Lion Picture Framing have just discontinued this moulding (see picture). Can anyone tell me where I can find the same or similar from a different supplier?

Man thanks.

[Not your average framer]

It would be helpful to be able to see what the end profile looks like, to get a proper idea of what this moulding looks like.

[BobbyJ]

Hi Mark,

Please see photo of moulding

[Not your average framer]

Tere were a few mouldings of that general style from different suppliers, maybe 10 to 20 years ago. I'm not sure that any were exactly the same, but the gradually disappeared and some even turned up in diacontined bargain bundles. I think that you find it difficult finding anything like that with in a perfect match. I'm not even sure how easy it would be the duplicated the finish by hand finish a bare wood moulding machined up to match.

I was trying to think of a suitable moulding which would be capable of being stacked to make something similar to the same profile, but I'm not sure that anything suitable exists. I don't think that it's anything which could be reproduced with a router and router bits and it's quite a complex profile for someone to reproduce using a CNC router.

Many similar mouldings would have been produced in more than one colour finish, is there any stock available, in an alternative colour which can be refinished to the colour required? Other than that, I can't think of anything else to suggest. Considering the fact that a bad recession seems to be predicted by just about everyone, if they have simply run out of stock, it's probably not an item which will be re-ordered with a recession just around the corner.

[Not your average framer]

I think it is a reasonable expectation that much of the high quality. factory finished mouldings, where prices are relatively high and stock turn around for the suppliers is not all that high willstart to disappear from the market in these difficult and challenging times. Some of these mouldings may become the province of the the small hand finished framer, but not all mouldings, or finishes will be possible to duplicate. Sadly, I think that we are going to see a lot more of this, as the effects of the coming recession become apparent. Many smaller framing businesses, will perhaps move into doing some hand finishing to pick up the slack from larger businesses which can't obtained that many of the expensive high class mouldings "off the shelf" anymore. The larger volume end of the market, which depends fairly heavily of high volume of items sold is going to not to change and adapt to survive. Maybe the smaller businesses with smaller overheads will be able to pick up some of the slack and do quite well, but one way, or another most of us will need to adapt in one way, or another.

Very few of us, will not need to make some adaptions, or adjustments, as things get more difficult, but I think that there are already some signs that not everything is going to be as before. Survival from some may involve a bit of down sizing, for others some degree of introducing some hand finishing may be helpful. Basic staining, waxing, or painying cheap bare wood mouldings may help to improve profitablity, where customers are not looking to spend much. In the period before the wars, quite a lot of basic framing was done in this way and I have re-framed plenty of framed picture from this era and although the quality was not always great, it fitted what was required and was considered by many as both adequate and acceptable for want they wanted. Low cost, non frills framing which probably came from this era, was still going strong in the 1950's and the 1960's. Lots of cheap, but nicely finished bare wood ramin and pine mouldings were produced in those days.

Many of us know more about how to produce nice finishes on bare wood than perhaps we realise. All that some of us need is a bit of practice and we can do just as well ourselves. It's not rocket science, in fact it's very basic stuff and very many of us are going to get through the difficulties ahead and come out the otherside in reasonable shape as well.