The Framers Forum

Does anyone know anything about this type of fitting? Its looks interesting, well, to me anyway.

I've seen these used before on big frames that have to be assembled/dismantled on site.
Never used them myself.

I think if you Google around for - kitchen work top clamps - you'll find those or something similar.

I've only seen this used before on a hardwood bed frame with dowels.

Some very well known and highly reputable framers use these to assemble really large frames and this also include joining lengths of moulding together end to end. This technique is not limited to just one on the kitchen work top joiners per joint, if the moulding is wide enough is may be beneficial to even have two, or even three, if there is a lot of weight needing to be kept in check. I have seen pictures of this technique being used for very large frames somewhere on the internet, I assumed that it was probably on this forum, but it was a long time ago, so I'm not completely sure all this time later.

The example that I saw was a 30 ft long canvas for an exhibition and the canvas needed to be stretched on site and it was very impressive. It was much to long to fit in to any available vehicles, so everything was assembled on site. I assume that it was quite challenging to do this, as there were some many joins in the frame, include 90 degree joins and the tolerances on each cut length would have been very demanding as the tolerances would add up from one joint to another. I wonder is the framers workshop had enough space to do a trial assembly to check everything fitted together really well before taking the whole thing to the exhibition.

Here is another version that has been around in the US for at least 60 years. It can be tightened in compression as well as expansion directions.

--amazon.com/Rockler-Tite-Joint-Fasteners/dp/B001DT17DG--