Opinions Wanted How to join stretcher moulding with different bevels

Create a Post
M

MorelandBE

Grumbler in Training
Joined
Oct 15, 2021
Posts
7
Location
Miami, FL
Business
Bee Happy Graphics LLC
My wife is a wildlife photographer; I'm technical support (which means I get to do everything she doesn't want to do). Framing isn't my main job, but I came up with the idea of putting bevels on the frames we make to stretch our canvas prints (you can go to What's New: Beveled-edge Gallery Wraps & Non-glare Acrylic to see a picture of what I'm talking about). We've experimented with both 30° and 45° bevels. It gets trickier when I need both on the same frame. I've done it, but I'm not convinced my solution was the best. So I made a contest. If you have any ideas about this, please visit A Contest For Woodworkers: Make Miter Cut Between Differently-beveled Mouldings. I appreciate your help. Thanks.
 
I would keep all of the 4 legs of the strainer with the same chamfer angle.
BTW, a strainer support system that you are making will not allow for any adjustments as the fabric expands and contracts with changes in humidity.
 
As Jerome suggests, use only one chamfer angle on a frame. Why would you want two angles in the same frame, anyway?

To reiterate Jerome's other point, the canvas support frame you're making with mitered corners is a strainer frame. A stretcher frame has keyed corners, so a canvas that relaxes over time can be "keyed out" to re-tension it. The same wood profile may be used for both types of support frames, but the differences are important.
 
A beveled stretcher is interesting.
It the potential future case where a person wants to frame their art (either because of a change of style, or it was a gift, and they didn't like the style to begin with), the framer will either need to restrecth the art, or they will need to modify a frame moulding. The restretch will be easier.

One way to have various angles from the back to front of the stretcher (chamfers?) would be to cut and join the stretcher (with or without keying, based on preference or ease), and then cut the bevels with a tablesaw, circular saw, or router.
If you follow this technique, you will need to add in the raised portion of the stretcher, as it would have been removed by the chamfering process.

An alternative would be to make the chamfer on the back, as your site shows, cut the stretcher to site size, join, and then hand saw the resulting overlap off.

This is similar to the geometry problems that architects are lilkely to have with multiple roof lines.

I'd be more interested in a reverse chamfered stretcher. It would give a bit of a floating effect, and would not cause any real problems to future framing attempts.
 
Yes, I misspoke about the stretcher/strainer frames. I knew the difference, but when talking about the moulding, I may have misunderstood my local supplier, who I thought called them all stretcher bars. Although we continue to evolve, because of the other things on my plate, we will have to stay with strainer frames for now. (I'm still pondering if we should and how we would move away from wire hanging hardware.)

Why two different chamfers? That's kinda complicated. It has to do with he way we do our gallery wraps. Here's a short summary of the methods used (Services https://www.beehappygraphics.com/services.html#canvas). All of those methods are done on non-beveled frames. As the discussion mentions, we do a stretch wrap. Then I got this "brilliant" idea that since we go to this trouble to beautify the edges, why not make them more visible? Normally, we would only use one type of chamfer (the 30-degree, because the 45 doesn't give enough extra material to do the corner folds). But on long, skinny panoramas, I can't get the illusion distances to match (see the first couple paragraphs of How To Make Your Beveled Edges Look Like A Continuation Of Your Image).

alacrity8 said:
One way to have various angles from the back to front of the stretcher (chamfers?) would be to cut and join the stretcher (with or without keying, based on preference or ease), and then cut the bevels with a tablesaw, circular saw, or router.
If you follow this technique, you will need to add in the raised portion of the stretcher, as it would have been removed by the chamfering process.

An alternative would be to make the chamfer on the back, as your site shows, cut the stretcher to site size, join, and then hand saw the resulting overlap off.
Click to expand...
Thinking about your first plan - it could get cumbersome on large prints. The router might do it. But then adding the raised edge, as you mentioned, might add too much work. Your alternative, though vague, sounds sort of like what I've done so far. Could you please give more details?
 
Interesting challenge because you are having to cut from the front sight edge as opposed to the overall outside dimensions. I suppose you could figure in a fixed add-on once the bars are standardized.
Have you considered using standard strainer/stretcher stock and adding a beveled strip to the outside to achieve the desired results? This would also allow for tensionable stretcher bars to be used.
 
I already had a CAD drawing for adjustable corner stretcher bars. Note the 30° bevel that can be added. Each rail is comprised of 2 attached sections or custom milled as a single rail.
7d6e3956-0eb9-4532-9c29-4a52ec4ce721.PNG
 

Attachments

  • stretcher bar corner miter joint Drawing v1.pdf
    173.6 KB · Views: 35
Here's a couple ideas for modifying existing stretcher bar. Inspired by Jerry's post.
IMG_0736.jpg
 
MorelandBE said:
Thinking about your first plan - it could get cumbersome on large prints. The router might do it. But then adding the raised edge, as you mentioned, might add too much work. Your alternative, though vague, sounds sort of like what I've done so far. Could you please give more details?
Click to expand...

1. Remove material from the back side of the strainer to get desired bevel.
Preferably in large batches.

2. Do a test mitre cut of each bevel style to determine the difference in length between the top and bottom of the moulding.
This difference can then be added to future cuts of this bevel style for measuring to the outside.

3. Cut and join the frame to the desired size.
The 45 degree sides will go past the 30 degree sides in the corners.

4. Use a hand saw, sander, Dremel tool, or other tool of choice to remove the excess wood in the corner.
It could also be done with a Mitre Saw prior to joining, but the possibility of mis-sizing seems higher.


I think Wally's idea of adding a bevel to normal stretcher stock is a better idea, as it means you are not weakening your stretcher by removing material.
It also has straight internal sides to make keyed corners, and straight sides also help with cross braces on larger projects.

Jerome's idea seems to be having material custom milled.
This is probably the best case, but not likely cost effective in the short run.

Either of these methods would still need cleanup of the corners.
 
If you look at what I said above the image, the design is actually 2 separate sections that are attached, the original bar stock and a triangle of wood moulding.
 
JFeig said:
If you look at what I said above the image, the design is actually 2 separate sections that are attached, the original bar stock and a triangle of wood moulding.
Click to expand...
Ah-ha! I now see the little notch at the bottom where the two pieces join. Nice joinery. Is the bevel in this example milled before or after being attached?

Only comment on the design is the crisp fold at the outside edge. I would guess that that would result in pigment loss. It does make for a visually interesting edge, but potentially impractical.
 
wpfay said:
Interesting challenge because you are having to cut from the front sight edge as opposed to the overall outside dimensions. I suppose you could figure in a fixed add-on once the bars are standardized.
Have you considered using standard strainer/stretcher stock and adding a beveled strip to the outside to achieve the desired results? This would also allow for tensionable stretcher bars to be used.
Click to expand...
No I haven't yet, but the idea sounds really promising.
 
JFeig said:
I already had a CAD drawing for adjustable corner stretcher bars. Note the 30° bevel that can be added. Each rail is comprised of 2 attached sections or custom milled as a single rail.
View attachment 40501
Click to expand...
The more I think about it, the more I like this idea. As an add-on to existing moulding, it would only need one non-45-degree miter cut, with no extra trim cuts necessary. One thing I see in these pictures that I was concerned about (which is easy to fix and might not even be a problem in the first place) - I was worried about adverse affects of stretching around sharp (more-than-90-degree) edges. Would that really be an issue? A new, similar question: on keyed corners, the possible expansion would be across the outside edges. Would the fact that there is now a (pointed) corner in the expansion zone make any difference?
 
JFeig said:
You can always chamfer the sharp edges and corner. I did not spend the time to do that in the CAD.
Click to expand...
Yes, I understood that, and liked your illustration. The question is "would those steps be necessary?" It wouldn't be the first time that one of my concerns turns out to be a non-issue.
 
Not sure why you want two different angles. BUT if you insist, I would use the two different angles and join them WITH THE POINT STICKING OUT, then sand off the excess. Seems pretty simple to me.
 
The contest is over (check the comment section of the original contest blog link to see the results). And, as promised, I wrote an article for our blog showing my technique (How To Join Mouldings With 30° & 45° Bevels). Upon its completion, my promise count did not drop, however, because your comments point to another way that might be easier and usable for both stretcher or strainer frames. I've gathered all the materials, but won't be able to work on that project right away. Thanks for all of your help.
 
Create a Post
Back
Top