The Framers Forum

Hi all

I have a £9k charcoal on paper to frame. it is 160 cm long...
Customer wants it floated.
I need to find Mountboard big enough!. Any suggestions? I could have it splcied I suppose.

I am not looking forward to this at all!!!

Any advice welcome

Gulp..

With stuff this size you need to think outside the box....

You can get mountboard that size (in limited colours) but a sheet going on 6ft long would be very floppy
and not really give adequate support. What size border are you contemplating and what colour?

If I were doing it I would construct a 'frame' from some flat timber. Rose&Hollis do obeche in 9x70 mm.
back this with 2.5mm MDF (sealed with PVA) and glue together. This leaves you with a rigid support with
a 9mm deep hole in the middle. Cut 10mm foam board to fit in the hole and hinge the work to this by wrapping
the hinges around the edges. Paint the exposed obeche to suit. The glue the foamboard-mount work in the hole
with a few spots of PVA.

This does only leave you with a max <65mm ish border.

If you want a bigger border you could make a frame from wide/flat timber and face it with MDF. Paint the outside
edges (the parts that show) and mount the work to thinner (5mm) foamcore. As there will be no cavity to sink the
foamcore into the work will float above the backing slightly which may or may not be a good thing.

Probably lots of other ways but that's the best I can do first thing in the morning.

What prospero said.


Well I would have gone with second, where the work is floating (on foamcore) off the painted MDF backing (6mm thick minimum), 10mm foamcore, if you can't get it big enough, then make a layered /ply out of 5mm foamcore

Thanks Gents
Good ideas.. however...
Centrado inform me they have Rising Mountboard which is big enough and up to 8 ply thick. This with an MDF back should do the job. Feeling happier!

Once again - your advice appreciated.

Best regards

MAtt

Wessex stock 10mm thick foamboard as 8ft x 4ft sheets. By it self it will not be rigid enough to maintain a flat surface and will need some additional reinforcement from behind. As Prosperro says a wooden structure behind will sort this, there are many ways of doing this, but real wood is the way to go because the grain in real wood make real wood stiffer than stuff like MDF. I know there are those who talk about splicing mountboard, well I'm one of those who has chickened out of even trying this and maybe you don't fancy trying it either. However I have faced 10mm foamboard with butt jointed mountboard and faced the mountboard overall with fabric. It looked fine and probably will stay that way for many years.

Do not expect any one moulding for the frame to be rigid, or stiff enough by it's self. Internal reinforcement is the easy way to make a job this size really sold. It may be that you can combine the reinforcement for the foamboard and for the frame as one entity. I not saying that this is a necessity, but it may be an option, if you need to. Be careful how you price jobs like this, they can involve a lot more labour than you may be thinking and in my case being very limited for space, I found it quite a struggle trying to do anything else while waiting for the glue to set, before moving on to the next part of the job.

I don't have a biscuit joiner, or any other heavy duty way of joining the corners of the internal reinforcement frame (sub frame), so I resorted to gluing and cross screwing the corner mitres. I've got a very old and heavy Record corner clamp, which makes jobs like this much easier. I know that a lot of people talk about band clamps, but a traditional heavy duty cast iron clamp with solid proportions and hefty clamping screws is an ideal tool for the job.

Big jobs can be a PITA, but there are merits in letting people know you undertake larger jobs, as you will pick up some level of work that others turn down. That is of course if you have the space to carry out larger jobs and with virtually no competition wanting to undertake such work, you won't find many competitors wanting to undercut your prices on larger jobs. I'm not suggesting that you need to do this, but it is a way of securing some extra work, if necessary.