The Framers Forum

I have quite a number of samples now from some different suppliers but after talking to one framer I wonder if it's worth expanding into buying bare wood moldings and hand finishing them myself.

I hadn't given this any thought at all but I'm open the the challenge! So what do you do yourselves? Is it 50:50 finished and hand finished or something like that?

Thanks guys.

Mine are all bare wood mouldings and finished by hand in different paints and techniques.

we're about 50/50 : bare woods with basic waxing, lime or paint/finished mouldings (including plastics). but white painted finish is the "thing" here.

nice thing about bare woods is you can keep in a small number of profiles in tulip, obeche or limewood, and still offer a good range of colours and finishes in wax and paint and wash, without taking the leap into "hardcore" handfinishing like mark (NYAF)

Thanks guys!

kev@frames wrote:nice thing about bare woods is you can keep in a small number of profiles in tulip, obeche or limewood, and still offer a good range of colours and finishes in wax and paint and wash

Exactly so! Hand finishing need not be something for the specialist few, but something which we can all include in our framing techniques.

Simple finishes require little time or skills to accomplish and can be very profitable.

kev@frames wrote:"hardcore" handfinishing

What's that?

At the moment I've got a majority of 'off the shelf' moulding samples, but I'm slowly increasing the number of hand finished ones. It seems a no brainer to me to buy a minimum number of profiles in bare wood in bulk, then hand finish them. You're then offering unique moulding but at a cheaper price. Quids in .

"hardcore" handfinishing
What's that?
Mark Lacey
anything that isn't a simple wax or paint finish

Not your average framer wrote:kev@frames wrote:
"hardcore" handfinishing


What's that?

I don't think you should be googling that one

I've been playing with hand finishing and it's quite a lot of fun too!