The Framers Forum

A customer has brought a couple of wooden cutlery trays in (probably ikea) that she would like Us to put a frame and glass over so she can display some objects

Do I need a fletcher multimaster or does anyone have any bright ideas of how to join the frames such that they can be separated easily?

She has chosen a 20mm square solid oak frame, the trays are about 50mm deep

Ta very muchly

If you want to avoid the cost of the multimaster, you can easily drive ordinary points into the side of the frame and then staple over the edge of the points. If you were doing a number of these then a multimaster would be better and more professional. I assume you would put backing tape over the joining system anyway so only you know how its done

Before the Multi-Master came along, some framers screwed screw eyes into the sides of the tray and inserted screws through the screw eyes and screwed these into the reverse face of the frame. I still do this when I want a stronger fixture that the one that is fired by the Multi-Master. It works really well too!

Another method is to use some small hinges. I've never done this, but it should work just fine. You won't be stuck for ways to get around this.

BTW, I bought my Multi-Master something like 18 years ago and find it very helpful on a regular basis, paid for it cost in no time at all. If you are a busy framer, I think that you will find it useful too, but there are other ways of doing jobs like this without buying the Multi-master.

One way is to use small mirror plates bent at a 90º angle. I think Lion actually do them ready-bent.

FWIW the Multimaster is my default point gun for everything.

Or some small right angle brackets from somewhere like b&q.

I like the screw eye idea, thanks very much.

(I might buy a multimaster anyway though!)

I don't do many stacked frames but I've used the screw eye system before and it worked very well

Screw eyes are fine for the odd frame but if you want to do this on a regular basis or in any quantity it is a bit long-winded.