Mounting a Heavy Brass Plaque Floating over Fabric.

[Kirstie]

I took in a shadow box job yesterday which will be composed of three folded T shirts. We will iron, fold, and mount the shirts on a backing covered with a rayon acetate in the college colors. Shirts will overlap each other and we will use Attach-Ez, and stitches to secure them, possibly with a little sutffing, maybe not.

Underneath these the client wants a heavy satin brass engraved plaque, about 8 x 10 mounted vertically. I will order the plaque. The client wants the plaque to float about 1/4" above the fabric backing. The finished frame will be over 30 x 40 and must be taken by car from Berkeley to the Penn boathouse next month..

The last time we time I used heavy brass was for UC Crew. This was fairly easy. We had a couple sheets of dark Cal blue acrylite sand blasted to eliminate the shine, and then Jeff mounted the 10 x 8 paques onto the acrylite using a double sided foam centered tape, weighting the plaques overnight. Then we framed the plaques with their Cal blue borders showing. We did 18 of these. (By the way, Jeff tried several adhesives but most failed in testing. This year the team needed new text on a plaque, and when we tried to pry one plaque off the acrylite we could not get it off and had to use new acrylite backing, so I guess they are holding well.)

Now on to this year's mounting challenge. This plaque must float over the fabric. Nothing can show, no strapping, no netting, nothing. We are going to work with adhesive. We can use the same tape to adhere a piece of thick acyrlic (?) to the back of the plaque, cut smaller than the plaque. Then cut hole in the fabric and somehow secure the thick acrylic or other material to a backer.

Rather than use trial and error on this one, I would love to hear the voice of experience. Thank you.

 

[MIK]

I like your idea of the acrylite. This time, why don't you mount a piece of wood/masonite(cut smaller than the plaque and in the thickness you require) from the back side using screws with washers to hold the wood and then use your supper-dupper tape to hold the brass. If you need to remove it, you can unscrew the piece from the back and re-install. I've done this several times with great success.

 

[Framar]

Speaking of screws, is it not permissible to have holes for screws drilled into the brass plaque?

 

[MIK]

I was thinking the same thing if the brass was already mounted to a wooden plaque

 

[Kirstie]

Speaking of screws, is it not permissible to have holes for screws drilled into the brass plaque?

The might be, but the father and son saw the Cal Crew example without holes, and, of course, they like that one.Those were done in bulk with special satin finished brass specail ordered. Those samples will get you every time! This whole project was designed with the exclusive input of the college junior.

Here is a photo of the plaque they like. Click plaque on second row for more detail.

Ack! I just realized I took my whole index page down last night! Right back....OK, back to normal. Late night error while putting a picture up on my back pack page storage area.

 

[Rick Granick]

Kirstie- you say the plak floats above the fabric, so wouldn't screws pierce holes in the fabric?... So far you haven't rejected screws, so my idea would be to cut the acrylic a little smaller than the plak and drill countersunk screw holes through. Affix the acrylic with flathead screws, the tops of which are slightly below the level of the acrylic's face, then mount your plak to the acrylic.
If screws won't work for the reason I mentioned, perhaps you could drill a series of small holes in the acrylic and attach it with stitching or Attach-EZ through the fabric and backing. Then mount the plak to it.
Rick
Oh, I think I just got it that the fabric in question is the backing's surface and not the shirts themselves...sheesh.

 

[Baer Charlton]

Laquaux (sp?) plaque to acrylic (blk) undersized and then glue to backing.

 

[Kirstie]

This project will already be heavy, even with acrylic. Any suggestions for backing to screw the plaque support into?

Another quandry :Figuring the labor (fitting) on these jobs still challenges us after 30 years of quotes. They always take twice as long as we think they will, with all the ironing, sewing, attach-ezing, supports, braces, yada yada. And if we were to charge our regular labor rate we would price ourselves out of the job given the actual hours which will be involved. Jerseys are straightforward, but I always find multiple T shirts tricky because they never really look nice and clean and flat. OTOH, the student is just fine with a mussed up look as this was the reality of the fight to win!

 

[Baer Charlton]

You aren't going to like it.. but mount the brass plaque which will weigh less than 2lbs... to a 1/4" thick solid core hardwood plywood that is undersized by an inch all around (6x8).

Screw through the backer into the 1/4" plywood as well as glueing.

Frank's adhesive will hold in both applications. Don't forget to black the edges of the board... and allow 48hours for the glue to dry on the plaque while under weight.

Or you can roll the back side of the plaque and let dry, then glue to the board under weight for 24 hours.

 

[Patricia Kotnour]

There is 1/2" thick Gatorfoam by Crescent which is very stiff but light weight and can easily be punched through with an awl and screwed on to your backing board. Attach-EZ now has 1" long nylon screws with matching nuts. These screws come with the new EZ-Tach Special Edition kits but can be purchased seperatly in a 50 bag qty. The handy thing about the screws is that they can be snipped off with a flat nosed pliers to remove excess length.

You could make the Gatorfoam board a bit smaller than the plaque... then screw the GF board on to the backing board. Once you have the float in place use the same method that you used before to attach the plaque to the Gatorfoam.

 

[HB]

...Another quandry :Figuring the labor (fitting) on these jobs still challenges us after 30 years of quotes. They always take twice as long as we think they will, with all the ironing, sewing, attach-ezing, supports, braces, yada yada...

Simple - charge twice as much as you think you should!

 

[FramerDave]

Another way to make a more preservation -minded, very sturdy backing is to glue the top layer of matboard (the background) to foamcore, then glue a second piece of matboard to the back of the foamcore.

Makes for a surprisingly sturdy board, better conservation-wise, with materials already on hand and no need for a special trip.

 

[Kirstie]

Thanks again for all your suggestions. The plaque will arrive in a week after we return from vacation, and we plan to start the project then, I am printing this whole thread for Jeff, who will isntruct the custom framer.

This group is so helpful!

 

[Kirstie]

I now have the plaque--$300 to the customer for this part--beautiful work and color fill. And now we formulate a plan to attach (float) it. We will probably use the same tape stuff Jeff used on the UC Crew plaques. Mount it on to a piece of wood or thick acrylic with countersunk screws going in to the backer behind the fabric mat. What I still don't have clear is what we are going to screw into. This plaque is 8 x 10 and fairly heavy as plaques go. A plywood backer will be too heavy for the whole piece. The student's East coast boathouse may not even know it is arriving and I don't want an installation problem on this kid's hands. We will probably use Z bar.

So I still need a good suggestion for the backer.

Jim Miller, are you around this week? Suggestions?

 

[HB]

They way I see it you are going to

mount an 8 x 10 fairly heavy metal plaque to a pc of wood (my guess is 3/4" Thk?) using a good dbl sided adhesive tape

lay this plq on wood unit against the fabric which lines the rearmost mounting board which I am guessing is mattboard or a foam core which on its own is too light a material to support the weight of the plq/wood assy

If this is not what you are doing --------just ignore me!!!!!

If this is what you are doing, why not mount the wood to the backing using screws from the back side, thru a filler then the backing then the fabric & finally into the wood which has the plaq mounted to it.

If you feel a complete filler/backing of 1/8 or 1/4" plywood is too heavy, then use Mighty Core (1/4" or 1/2" thk) with a smaller pc of reinforcement at the mounting location (needs to be only approx. 12" x 14" of 1/8" or 1/4" thk plywood or other similar material that can accept holes (even 12 ply matboard with screws & fender washers would probably wor

 

[JPete]

Here is Jim Millers article from PFM.
http://www.pictureframingmagazine.com/pdfs/mounting/MAY02_OBJECTMOUNT.pdf

I would think the polyflute and the bent rod could be used to hold it by attaching the bent rod to screws which are counter sunk from the front of the acrylic as suggested before.

Do more searchs on Jim Miller and Polyflute and you may find Jim's perfect solution.

 

[Jay H]

Well I'm not Jim Miller but maybe the way I did it could help.

I did just as Pat sugests but sewed down foamcore through the fabric and tape to that.

Carry on.

 

[Kirstie]

Photo of finished frame

Thanks everyone for your advice on this project. Photo attached. We used the double sided mending tape to attach the heavy brass to a very small frame made from stretcher bar. Then we used screws through the backer as suggested to attach the stretcher to the backer, through the fabric. For the backer we mounted two pieces of mat board to foam core, and screwed through that. Glazing was UV acrylic. T shirts are always harder to sew down than jerseys because they are so thin and often washed and worn many times. Sewing was attach-ez and thread. Profile X scoop liner and matching fabric backing.

The idea here was to make the Penn shirt large and impressive, with its medal, and the losing teams look subservient, with their shirts folded smaller, and under the plaque, which was raised about 3/4". The customer loved the finished product.

A bit of barrel distortion on the photo, which I had a difficult time editing out. I'll work on it some more because I'd like to put it on our site.

Thanks again for your helpful plaque mounting suggestions.