The Framers Forum

Mark

I copied your comments to a good friend who owns a huge moulding factory in Malaysia. 500 + workers and ships container loads of small and medium black mouldings all over the world. Here is his reply below......................

=======================================================================================
Finger joint is GOOD. It is good in various dimensions – it is good for the environment because with FJ, the usability of wood increased substantially. Wood is natural and it has imperfections from many things, such as knot from a branch and some holes / hollow. With FJ, we cut away the bad parts and still can use majority of the remaining good parts. Trees are not always straight and perfectly rounded so not always we can get long straight boards out of them. Being able to FJ means even short pieces of timber from special parts of the tree can all be used. Apart from the environment, FJ does help with increasing the strength of the moulding, also reducing possibility of twist and bend. In the factory, we test the strength of the finger joints in various stations. Often, when the moulding breaks, it is the part without FJ that breaks, due to reasons such as a crack in the timber, coarse grain or rotten part.

For the framers’ comment, I do not agree that with tiny moulding, there might be a risk of FJ breaking apart if the v-nail happens to hit on the FJ part. This is so because with the number of years we work in this industry, the quantity of FJ mouldings we (and many manufacturers out there) sent and the number of frames made around the globe every day, not once that we hear FJ breaking apart due to a v-nail happen to hit the FJ.
=========================================================================================

Thank you Keith,

I appeciate all the trouble you went too, to get those comments. I have over the years encountered various different narrow black mouldings and usually the cheaper, or often the most narrow involve a lot more effort to make the finished frame properly presentable. A lot of the narrowest mouldings use very hard, but not necessarily the best quality wood and often result in gaps opening at the corners, which take time to make the corners presentable. Too many of such mouldings, which come from the far east also have very hard and brittle black gesso which cracks and chips far to easily when cutting on a Morso. Too many of these narrow as possible moulding do not underpin very well. Only one wedges in each corner is not alway adequate.

I get some customers who want the narrowest possible black moulding and it's mostly for excessively large artworks and these excessively narrow mouldings never have enought rebate depth to neatly hide a sub frame for adequate rigidity and and strength, so this has been a real PITA to me down the years. Too many customers think that specifying as narrow a frame as possible, is going to save them money, when this is not always the case and unfortunately this puts pressure on my ability to ensure a decent and worthwhile margin for me. As you can imagine, with the current economic pressures of the present times, I would much rather pay a bit more and not spend any extra time making good any defects.

I am thinking that narrow and often ower cost mouldings no longer give me the option to produce frames at the same kind of mark up's as everything else, as I need to charge a highier mark up than in former times to make it worthwhile. It has been becoming (rather unfortunately) that there are now less available deeper narrow black cushion mouldings and very often the price of these can be quite a problem when it comes to getting a worthwhile mark up and keeping the customer happy with the overall price. I never used to do so many narrow black frames, but it is becoming a very connon thing more recently.

Mark.

Finger joints are OK if you buy ready-finished. I favour R&H SW939 Ash as my go-to 'simple little moulding'.
Finger joints wouldn't work with it as I like to have the grain showing whatever colour I paint it.
There is another LJ one that is a bit smaller in Tulip which I like for spacer applications. It needs minimal prep
as the grain has no pores to fill.

Doing quantities of frames in one colour hand-painted is a bit long winded though but I win out doing smaller runs as
there is vitually zero waste and it can be any colour/finish I want.

Some of the old Lira moulding had multiple finger joints in a single stick. I had one bit with ten in.
One advantage is that you never get a twisted stick.

Thanks Peter.