THIS is why you always buy extra wood.

Art Mulder

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London, Ontario
One of my current honey-do projects is a custom picture frame for some pictures commemorating our vacation from last summer.

My original plan was to use some 100 year old pine for this. A friend was gutting a 100+ year old farm house outside of town, and he gave me a couple of the 2x4s out of the house. One of them had some neat streaks of colour in it, but it wasn't enough wood for my needs. As for the other board, it was nice enough, but I decided that it was just too bland for this project.

I don't have a lot of lumber on hand right now, but as I was looking through my meager stash I found a couple of 6/4 spalted maple boards that I had been holding onto for 4-5 years. A friend of mine used to collect urban logs (he is a builder) from worksites and have them sawn for lumber. I bought a lot of cherry from him years ago, and he'd tossed in these spalted boards.

The problem was that they were pretty junky. Big cracks, a couple unsightly knots, and bowing and waving all over the place. So they just sat there for years. This picture frame is about 24x12" (plus the width of the wood) so I don't really need big pieces, so I thought I could probably make it work from these woods. So I started cutting and dressing...

Here we are so far:
IMG_7167.jpg IMG_7168.jpg

I've got five good pieces for the picture frame. They're a healthy 3" wide, and plenty thick, and long enough to incorporate the miters and a bit of fiddling and fitting. There are four boards for the frame and a spare in case of accidents as I progress with the milling.

In addition there are 3 other boards left, each of which sort of fits inbetween the short and long ones pictured in terms of length. None of the 3 rejects had enough decent spalting to be used for this project.

And what did I start with? (wish I'd taken a photo, sorry)
I started with two 6/4 boards. Each one was 9" wide and almost 8ft long.

And this is all that is left. :eek:

THATS why you always get extra wood when planning a project.



(If you're wondering about the frame in the photo: I figured it was cheaper to buy a picture frame rather than have glass custom-cut to size, and also a matt custom cut. So I am building my frame to wrap around and over this frame. I'll post more as the project unfolds.)
 
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Coming along...
- milled the notch to receive and wrap around the inner frame
- milled the small 45 on the inside corner
- milled the larger 45 on the outside corner
- Cut the miters on the TS
- popped a pair of dowel holes into each miter
- glued and clamped.
- only got one miter with a tiny gap that needs fixing -- (I hate miter joints :bang:)

It was a productive afternoon! :D
IMG_7170.jpg IMG_7171.jpg

The original plan was for a few more grooves in the frame, but with the wild spalted grain, I think it is best to let the grain be the feature, and not fancy molding cuts.

Now it's on to some sanding and scraping and then apply the finish. Did one test piece with Tried + True original wood finish, and another with Circa 1850 Tung+Teak, and the Tung+Teak is the winner.
 
Love that spalted maple... :thumb:

You said it. I've already got one coat of finish on and it's stunning.
That's why I kept those boards even though they were so cracked/twisted.

Unfortunately, I doubt my snapshots will do it justice! :photographer:

(This stuff needs 24hrs between coats, so It'll probably be Monday eve before I put up more pix)
 
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