Joining stacked mouldings by underpinning them together

[Not your average framer]

Quite often I find it is possible to creatively combine stacked mouldings to form one larger profile. Normally this involves a lot of messing around fixing the separate mouldings together, however with some careful planning and the right mouldings there is a really neat time & labour saving solution.

The links below are for pictures illustrating three mouldings stacked together as one profile and fastened together by glueing and underpinning them together. The white finish is Wickes "Ripple Coat", first recommended on this forum by Prospero. These plain wood profile include two "off the shelf" ones from Simons and one made to order for me by Norfolk Mouldings. The whole process of stacking and joining is suprisingly quick and easy to do. My thanks to Prospero for hosting the pictures.

http://www.petrbnsfineart.com/images/markpic002.jpg

http://www.petrbnsfineart.com/images/markpic003.jpg

[Moglet]

A very elegant design, Mark!

This is another example of why the Forum is such a great place: it would not have occured to me in a month of Sundays to pin through stacked mouldings. Great tip!

[Not your average framer]

Hi Aine,

The idea only occurred to me somewhat recently, but I don't suppose that I'm the first to do it.

For those who are interested:

The outer moulding (Obeche) was made for me by Norfolk Mouldings for about 11 pence per foot.

The Middle moulding (Pine) is Simons J/10 which is normally 22 pence a foot, (unless you get discounts from them). This moulding is rapidly becoming one of my favorites (amoungst a few other flat Simons profiles) and is used in combination with a variety of other mouldings which I try to keep in stock at all times. (This means that I can produce a massive range of hand-finished combinations from a relatively limited range of stock mouldings at short notice and at reasonable cost).

The centre moulding is Simons M0099 which is normal 16 pence a foot, (again unless you get discounts from them). This moulding used to be made from Ramin, but a little while ago, Simons started making it in Obeche instead. IMO the Obeche has also much improved the quality, look and feel of what used to be their plain wood Ramin range. Anyone who has not checked out this range since it was changed to Obeche might find it worth doing so.

It should not take long for some forum members to work out that there are a lot of other moulding combinations which can be assembled by underpinning them together. In particular, these two Simons mouldings could have been made for use with one another. Do you homework on prices or different combinations too, if you get it right it can be a good and profitable way of producing nice hand-finished larger or more interesting profiles.

The example shown was simply finished with Wickes "Ripple coat", but could also be finished in so many other ways.

[Not your average framer]

I am also thinking about getting a moulding made up which will add a nice profile to the outer edge of 12mm MDF for block mounting prints, while being flush with the front surface of the MDF. This is because my local handware shop is happy to saw the MDF to size by hand, so a nice profile which can be glued and underpinned around this could be an interestingly quick and in-expensive option. Any filler required btween the moulding and the MDF would of course be sealed first and then hidden by the block mounted print.