Simple way of finishing some small ready made frames.

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Not your average framer
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Simple way of finishing some small ready made frames.

Post by Not your average framer »

I am going to be making up a small quantity of small square ready made frames, using left over scraps. The material has already been paid for in so far as the are waste from making other frames. I either find a use for them, or throw them away. Considering that I can make a small batch of these in a relatively short time, it seems sensible to do so, but I am needing to apply a finish to these frames very quickly and cheaply. The frames are mainly pine and pine does not normally stain well. Spending too much time with different stages to get the best result is definitely not part of the plan.

There won't be much time available to paint, or stain individual frames if these are going to be worthwhile to be doing. I need to make these frames in under 10 minutes each from start to finish for this to be worth doing. The finishes are going to be a black, a white, a light brown wood stain and a medium dark brown wood stain any ideas?

Thanks.
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
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prospero
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Re: Simple way of finishing some small ready made frames.

Post by prospero »

:wink: Take three times longer and charge six times as much. :D
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Re: Simple way of finishing some small ready made frames.

Post by Not your average framer »

Hi peter,

Unfortunately, that's not a practical propostion as I won't be able to sell them for six times as much. I was hoping to find as way of getting a satifactory way of getting away with a one coat finish, well I've just been down to my workshop and been giving things a try out. I can cut and join the mouldings in what I was allowing for doing that, but the painting, or staining the wood takes longer to get a satisfactory finish and just a one coat finish is not looking like working. In fact I'm not so convinced that a two coat finish is necessarily going to be completely satisfactory either. It's still a viable idea, but there will need to be some revision of the hourly labour rates that I will be able to pay myself, which is not really what I was planning for. So time for a bit of re-thinking my plans. I've got a couple of older tins of liming wax, which I don't use, because it's too time consuming, but I'm going to try thinning some down with white spirit and just brushing it on as a base coat for the white finish.

It won't be a very solid base coat, but it will seal the wood grain, so I don't need to worry about raising the grain.I am out of chalky emulsion at the moment and will need to get some to mix it with acrylic paint. I have used chalky emulsion and acrylic over a wax base before and if you set the paint with a hot gun the wax and the paint easily bond together and produce a very strong and permanent bond. This combination always seems to cover in one coat, but it then needs to be sealed. Unfortunely, it's got to be something very quick and easy, so I shall be trying some neutral wax, thinned down with white spirit, which is easy to dry with a hot air gun. The neutral wax does not tend to dry with glossy patches so hopefully, there won't be any further work. I can try some of this later today and see what happens. I will need to use different materials for the other colours of finishes. If this works, I am hoping to get the plan back on track with my original time scales, if not I shall need a new plan
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer
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Re: Simple way of finishing some small ready made frames.

Post by Not your average framer »

Wax is one of the oldest adhesives known to man. Most people don't realise this, I use this quite a lot for bonding apparently not compatible finishes to each other. This works extremely well and it very durable. I make my own bronzing powder based gold finishes and the bonding agent for the finishes is wax. I also apply washes over cheaper factory finished mouldings and the wash is stippled in to wax, partly wiped away and then set in place with a hot air gun. I also do my own black gold finish and gun metal finishes and again these use wax as the bonding agent. It's well worth learning some of the clever tricks that you can use with wax, both as part of hand finishing and as a filler as well. I have some old bees wax pellets and these make an excellent wood filler and are easily tinted to match the mouldings which have defects that need to be filled.

Changing the subject slightly, it's possible to gild with bronzing powders and egg white. I've not done it, but I know how to do it and egg mixed with powdered pigment produces an extremely durable paint and their are plenty of examples of this on the outside of many Italian building which have servived in all weathers for the last four to five hundred years and many of them still look quite reasonable today. I have done a little experimenting with making my own egg tempra paints, just to see what happens and was quite suprised how simple and easy it was. Lots of these ancient techniques are seeing a bit of a revival in these days and may be worth knowing, if we can't always obtain some of the things that we need. There is a local artist who still makes and uses his own egg tempra paints and he taught me how t do it myself.
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer
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Re: Simple way of finishing some small ready made frames.

Post by Not your average framer »

I've just been out and had my disabled driving instruction and when I got back, I tried doing a quick and easy medium to dark brown finish. My first attempt with a combination of dark oak wax and burnt umber paint, but it did not look particularly good. I messed around with this a while, but to no effect. I did not think there was much chance of it looking any better with raw umber, but I tried it and it was better. I finally tried mixing a mixture of raw umber and burnt ubmer into a lttle of the dark oak wax and this was great over a base coat of the raw umber.

I then gave it a couple of quick strokes with a nylon nail brush and it polished to an excellent finish. Now it looks like Wengi, so that's one colour finish sorted. It was really quick and easy as well. I'm hoping that the light brown finish is going to be as easy, but I suspect that this may not be as straight forward. So that's one finish sorted and three more to go! I definitely need to go and buy some chalky emulsion paint fairly soon so I can get all of this sorted fairly quickly, but so far I'm beginning to think that I'm on the right track.

I'm pretty sure that the white finish is going to need a different approach and that's going to need a lot more thinkig about how to do it.
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer
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Re: Simple way of finishing some small ready made frames.

Post by Not your average framer »

The titanium white acrylic paint has an unfortunate property in so far as the titanium dioxide pigment particules are totally non pourous and limit the drying process of the acrylic medium in the paint. Unfortunately this not only considerably slows down the time it takes for the paint to set, but even after it has set, the paint is still taking time to fully harden for weeks and ths is not very helpful if you are hand finishing frames with it.

I have still got a reasonable quantity of Wickes ripple coat and I am thinking about mixing some of this with my titanium white to see if this will speed up the process of the paint setting. I have my suspicions that the level of improvement may be somewhat margnal, unless I am adding a really substancial proportion of the ripplecoat to a much smaller proportion of the titanium white.

Does anyone have much idea about how durable the Wickes ripple coat is likely to be in this case?

Thanks.
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
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Re: Simple way of finishing some small ready made frames.

Post by prospero »

I use ripple paint mostly as a primer, or to build up a texture. Similar application as trad Gesso, but it's quicker
to prepare (take the lid off :P ). It can be sanded very smooth. I also use it well diluted as a wash over gold.
If doing a painted finish, I do a coat or two of artist acrylic on top. This is much tougher than ripple, so ideal
for top coats. Ripple paint dries quite matt, with a chalky look. It is quite durable, but it susceptible to scuffs.
You can make it tougher by polishing with wax, but this somewhat defeats to object as you may as well use acrylic.

** Ripple paint only comes in White. It can be tinted with acrylic, which I do to take the edge of the glaring white.
Usually a dollop of Raw Umber. You cannot make dark shades. You can also bulk it up with dry pigment or dry poster paint.
This is mainly to allow you to create heavy textures. It's important not to overdo this as too much dry pigment will weaken
the paint.
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Re: Simple way of finishing some small ready made frames.

Post by Not your average framer »

Thanks Peter,

That's much as I was suspecting. I'm guessing that chalky emulsion is a bit tougher, but that's probably only a bit more binder in the paint, so perhaps a little bit of acrylic medium stired into the ripple coat will go a long way to sorting that. I've got some fairly thick acrylic sealing sander, which dries as hard as nails. I don't tend to use it any more and I've plenty of it, so I might as well use it. Hopefully it is do the trick and it's real high grade stuff. I fairly convinced that the lighter brown finish is going to be reasonably straight forward.

I'm not so sure about the black as I'm unsure how much pigment they put in the black paint. I'm thinking that one coat of the black is very unlikely to be enough. I'm probably going to need two coats of the black, plus a coat of the Polyvine black wax finish acrylic varnish. I guessing that the black finish will probably take a little bit more time to do. Earlier, I was beginning to think that this idea was not going to be such a good idea, but I am beginning to think that it's probably looking really likely to fullfill all my hopes and plans after all.

I had as second look at the dark brown finish that I did the other day and I think that I will probably add in little touch of black to make it a more consistently degree of covering with mainlyone coat on top of a fairy thin dark primer coat. The batch of frame length which I cut on saturday morning was surprisingly productive, I easily cut enough moulding lengths for 6 frames in a little under 30 minuites. I know that some colours and sizes may be a bit slow in selling and I won't know have successfull I will be selling these untill later, but I feel that I have been able to build in an adequate safety margin to see me alright.
Mark Lacey

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Re: Simple way of finishing some small ready made frames.

Post by GeoSpectrum »

If you are after quick and easy why not get some water based spray paint?
Alan Huntley
Ashcraft Framing
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Re: Simple way of finishing some small ready made frames.

Post by Not your average framer »

Hi Alan,

I not sure how this is likely to cost! Are you tinking about aerosol rattle cans? I guessing that these would cost more that my current method, but to be honest, I don't have a great idea of what this is likely to cost, how well it is going to cover and how durable it is likely to be. I also do not have a dedicated are where I can undertake spraying in doors. I would not rule out the possibility of making a small spay cabinet with anextractor fan extracting through a small window, but this is not possible just yet!

However, thanks for the suggestion. I would certainly be interested, if the costs and time required made sense.

Mark.
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
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Re: Simple way of finishing some small ready made frames.

Post by GeoSpectrum »

Go to Graff City website and look up MTM water based sprays. They are about £5 a can
With a great range of
Colours. The water based is great as you can spray it indoors with a simple setup.
Alan Huntley
Ashcraft Framing
Bespoke Easels and Self-assembly tray frames
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Re: Simple way of finishing some small ready made frames.

Post by Not your average framer »

Hi Alan,

I just had a look on their website and it looks interesting.

I am woundering how many coats on paint this MTM spray paint is likely to be required to spray a not particularly large ready made frame?

How durable is this sort of paint usually?

Will I need to prime the surface first?

And is it likely to work well on pine mouldings, or is it likely to be better on Obeche?

Can I get a reasonable number of frames out of each can?

I also use Obeche mouldings as well, for ready made frames, so I don't need to stick to only Pine mouldings. If I can get half a dozen small ready made frames out of the can's worth of paint, I think that this looks viable for me.

Thanks,
Mark.
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer
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Re: Simple way of finishing some small ready made frames.

Post by GeoSpectrum »

Only one way to tell...
Alan Huntley
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Re: Simple way of finishing some small ready made frames.

Post by Not your average framer »

I guess so!
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer
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Re: Simple way of finishing some small ready made frames.

Post by Not your average framer »

The idea of using spray cans has really got me thinking! As I think about this, spray cans may work quite a bit better on Obeche mouldings, than on my bulk lot of Pine mouldings that I bought something like about six months ago. I have not had much of a look in my out building to see what I have got in terms of Obeche mouldings, but it's probably a decent amount and I got a decent amount of very tough Polyvine dead flat (totally matt) wax fnish vernish, so if I don't need not apply a heavy amount of spray can paint a quick coat of the dead flat varnish provide all the extra durability that is needed.

Also many Obeche mouldings look great with a matt finish, where as I need to tone down the effects of the woodgrain with the pine and maybe finishing the Obeche frames may be a lot easier anyway. As it happens, I was also looking at a fairly modern and trendy lookng moulding profile yesterday and realise that I've got some older style Obeche moulding which if I cut a slope on a raised part of the outer edge, will not only closely match the more modern profile, But will turn a cheaper moulding in to a much more expensive look a like!

Maybe the biginings of an interesting idea! The cheaper moulding is about one fifth of the price of the other one, which is admittedly already factory finished, but it's not going to take long to hand finish it and the cost of handfinishing won't cost anywhere near te difference in price. I've definitely going to have to give this a try. I am also having a re-think about which colours I will intend to finish my smallest Pine moulding in, with a view to making the finishing less complicated and much quicker and simpler. I'm thinking that ths is going to be much better for me!

Thanks everyone for your suggestions and making me consder different ideas to my own.
Mark.
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer
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