Tip for wall buddies and sawtooths

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MnSue

MnSue

SGF, Supreme Grumble Framer
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Aug 18, 2005
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Minneapolis, MN
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Framing Solutions MN
I found the biggest "fear" for customers using either to hang art is the fear of not getting the wall marked correctly, therfore, making to many holes in the wall.

I started suggesting:

"put a dab of toothpaste on these and when you have the picture where you want it, touch the wall. Pull the picture straight/directly off the wall. A bit of the toothpaste will remain on the wall to mark the nail spot."

I have recieved a couple of calls when they have hung the art, saying thanks and "why didn't I think of that."

I wondered if other framers may also say " now why didn't I think of that" too!so here ya go. I hope this tidbit will help releive some anxiety moments............
 
So if anyone starts a thread asking for ancillary products to carry in a framing store we can suggest toothpaste...

:popc:


Good suggestion.

Dave Makielski
 
I know of an artist whose landlord wouldn't allow nail holes in the walls, so she stuck her paintings-on-paper, unframed unfortunately, to the walls with toothpaste!

Sue, great suggestion!!
 
Rick Granick said:
Would this also whiten your walls?
:icon11: Rick
Click to expand...

A slight franken....
A professional wallpaper-er once told me to clean light colored wallpaper with 7-up; and darker wallpaper with coke...(rinse well)....

I guess it coke can clean the acid off of battery cables, it should clean wallpaper...

anyone know of "archival" toothpaste - wouldn't want any leeching...
 
Great tip, Sue. I have a fairly large frame that I recently finished to display in my shop (and I used wallbuddies for the hangers). It is still sitting on the floor, against the wall, waiting to be hung up. I'm going to try your toothpaste suggestion when I go to hang it. Thanks!
 
The way I hang with WallBuddies is to bend one tooth in the middle straight out. When the 'spotter' says that's it, you poke the two teeth into the wall. Them you bend the teeth back into place, install the nail and hanger in the holes and hang the frame.

Takes 60 seconds tops.

I charge 40 bucks for that if the customer is not too far away from the store.
 
Toothpaste

Another use for toothpaste is to polish out a shallow scratch in plexi. It takes some serious elbow grease but works, when you don't have plexi scratch remover handy. Auto-body compound works too
 
We also have used toothpaste to fill in nail holes in the wall.
 
Add TP for strength

FrameMakers said:
We also have used toothpaste to fill in nail holes in the wall.
Click to expand...

You can even patch small bullet holes with toothpaste if you add body to the mixture with a bit of toilet paper. After the plug dries, match the textue with a top coat of toothpaste applied with a Q-tip.
 
Yeah, Chili, that's what the girls at the pen told me....
 
Baer Charlton said:
I just want to know by what rational wall buddies are acceptable for the MCPF, but screw eyes are not?
Click to expand...

Well I don't presume to speak for the committee that developed the criteria for the MCPF exam, but I'll give it an educated guess.

Nowhere are Wall Buddies specifically mentioned as acceptable or not. But as I recall, and I may be paraphrasing, the standards call for a secure two-point hanging system, or if wired, a secure attachment and provision to allow the wire to run at a 60 degree angle from the horizontal.

By these standards, Wall Buddies are acceptable because they are secure when hung, hang the frame from two points and does not cause undue stress on the frame. Really no different from using two mirror hangers without wire.

I don't recall that screw eyes were specifically ruled out, but there are better options. Screw eyes tend to stick out too far for one thing, but that's probably an aesthetic matter more than anything else. Probably the more important thing is the physics involved. If you imagine a wired picture with screw eyes, you can see that the wire pulls up on the screw eyes, but the bigger problem is that they pull in as well. Since they stick out a bit, there's leverage pulling on them which can eventually bend them, pull them out of the wood (particularly in soft wood) or in rare cases cause them to shear off.

Thinking back, I don't know that anything was completely ruled out in the exam. You could probably use nearly any methods or materials, but you'd better be prepared to show that they meet the standards.

On a related note, I went to a sister in law's on Sunday to hang some pictures for her. On two large pieces there were mirror hangers with wire. One was a piece of pre-framed stuff with mirror hangers and a sticker on the back instructing the consumer NOT to put wire on it. Sure enough her husband had and the mirror hangers had bent out of shape because of it. They're lucky they hadn't broken. Another was a custom-framed oversized piece with plexi. Mirror hangers and wire installed by the framer. Even with the fairly light weight they had also been bent out of shape.
 
Baer, I think David is right. Where did you get the idea that screw-eyes are not acceptable?

Any hanging system could be scored down if it is installed improperly. For example, if short screw-eyes are used in soft wood, or if they are too close to the inside or outside of the frame, or if they are the wrong size, or if the wire is too tight to enable a 60-degree angle of departure. If the judges find any other deficiencies in the hanging system, they are to deduct points on the basis of the criteria given. Scoring is as objective as the developers could make it, but it still leaves some subjective reasoning to the judges.
 
FramerDave said:
...Thinking back, I don't know that anything was completely ruled out in the exam. You could probably use nearly any methods or materials, but you'd better be prepared to show that they meet the standards...
Click to expand...

You got it, Dave. There is plenty of latitude built into the exam scoring, to allow new and better ways of framing, which is intended to account for future improvements in technology.

Candidates need to be careful about deviating from the recommended methods and materials, though. For example, I believe the exam specifies that fillets and other wood within the frame package must be sealed with a "gas impermeable barrier". Well, that would be either glass or metal, according to the specifications given. If a candidate "sealed" the fillet by painting with varnish or gesso, his/her score would be marked down because those are not gas impermeable barriers.
 
Jim Miller said:
Any hanging system could be scored down if it is installed improperly. For example, if short screw-eyes are used in soft wood, or if they are too close to the inside or outside of the frame, or if they are the wrong size, or if the wire is too tight to enable a 60-degree angle of departure.
Click to expand...

And the manual for all this physics is, where?

This is the one thing that has always made me curious since Paul Fredrick made a statement about the double hang point and the 60-degree (or I think then the politically correct angle was 45).

And so how far above the hang-point (screw eyes) should that 60 degree reach its apogee? I mean, if I run the wire only slightly loose, the 60-degree point can be established a 1/2" above the screw eyes..... or I could allow enough wire for the two points to become one about 3' above the screw eyes... who's to say which is wrong? Was there a consultant from the Physics lab at MIT involved?

I guess I question stuff like this because year in and year out I unscrew screw-eyes that have unfailingly been in frames for decades, and I mean MANY decades. Some with the wire snug, some with enough wire to lasso a FedUp truck. Either way, they are still doing their job just fine. Now all of a sudden.. they are wrong.

Now they didn't let me get all that close at the Rijksmuseum, the Louvre, or the Prado, but they didn't seem to hung to any uniform 60-degrees.. and as for the wire angles on the frames at the Tower in London this last May.... a heck of a lot closer to 10-degrees than 60. But than we already know that the old museums are antiquated anyway.
 
not this again...

The physics of it all can be found on the FACTS website, www.artfacts.org, unless, like some people, you believe that math and physics is a matter of opinion.

This diagram illustrates it all very well:
WireFig1.jpg


I'll leave it to somebody who remembers their high school physics better than I to explain how the F=1/2m/sin was derived.

At 60 degrees the stress on the wire anchor point are minimized. It's a matter of physics, pure and simple.

I suppose that how far up the wire goes just depends. A good starting place is to assume that the picture will be hung by two hooks, since that is good practice and will help the frame hang level with less shifting. And I usually assume that the hangers will be toward the middle of the frame since that's easier for the consumer and makes it a bit more forgiving if it has to be adjusted. So then wire from that. I usually leave my wire a bit slack to allow for the 60 degrees and to make it easier for the customer to hang it.

I suppose there is something to be said for historical precedent. By examining old frames we can see how different methods and materials have held up. But I would wager that only using frames from various museums, no matter how prestigious, would give us a skewed sample set. After all, these are works that have been coddled, examined, repaired and generally treated well for many years, if not their entire life. But how many lesser frames and works of art were trashed when some component failed?

I certainly appreciate fine craftsmanship. I met Linda Wassell (just to drop a name) yesterday for lunch and I was awestruck by her nearly closed-corner frames and incredible french matting. No machine can reproduce what she does. But when we discuss how much new things should creep into framing I always wonder where some would draw the cutoff line and fossilize framing. Some people sniff at the idea of a CMC in favor of a manual straight line cutter. But those were once new. Should we all be required to cut our mats with a handheld knife and a straightedge? If we want to be real framers must we burn our underpinners and join our frames freehand like Paul Fredrick did so many years ago?

Instead of clinging to the old just because it's old, let's keep the classics but be open to the new.

Didn't you do all the framing at the Tower of London?
 
Half a century ago, wood used for framing was generally good; solid, straight grain, mostly hardwoods. Today, finger-joined, insect riddled, split grain wood is being used for moulding, much of which would have been rejected as firewood fifty years ago. Mushwood and snotwood are more popular now, and quality hardwoods are getting scarce.

Aside from the deteriorating quality of wood, we also have new materials, such as MDF and polystyrene. They don't hold threaded connections as well as good old hardwood, either. But all of these framing materials are here to stay, and it would be unwise for framers to ignore the differences.

Why not screweyes? Because they hold the point of pulling force away from the frame by at least 1/8" and sometimes as much as 1/2". That creates what amounts to a lever; the fulcrum being the surface of the wood. Using a flat connector, such as Infinity hangers or D-rings, puts the point of force very near the fulcrum (surface of the wood), greatly reducing the lever action that tends to elongate the hole. Screweyes were never the best device for the purpose, but they have always had one advantage: they are cheap.

It's interesting that whenever criticism of an inferior-but-established framing technique comes up, somebody says something like, "...I've seen 100 year old examples of that technique and they're still working just fine." Sure, and you can probably find gamblers who win more than they lose, too.

Baer, I'm no physicist, but I am confident that a screw of any sort would pull out of Obeche more easily than it would pull out of Ramin, especially when a nearly-horizontal wire imposes more pulling force on the connection between the screw and the wood. Add to that the lever action of standing the wire off the back of the frame by about 1/4" or so, and you increase the chances of failure.

I'll take a two-point hanging system every time, preferably with multiple threaded attachments to the frame.
 
Baer,

I thought that you, being the self proclaimed lifelong woodworker, would understand the basics of the screw (thread) and how it applies its holding power to a piece of wood and also its efficiencies and inefficiencies as a fastener. I'm gonna have to dredge up some old information that my dad taught me as a child about fasteners and how they work in a piece of wood. Maybe this basic stuff will be of some help to a few of you in understanding how important something as simple as using proper fasteners and the right size of hanging wire is to a professional framing job.

My dad told me that a basic screw is much like a mortise and tenon joint in the way it holds itself in a piece of wood, whereas, a nail is much like a hickory peg in its method of holding. If you can picture a screw, be it a wood screw or a screw eye or anything else with a threaded end, being turned into a piece of wood, the threads are like the tenon of a wood joint and the groove that the screw cuts into sides of the hole in the wood is like the mortise, one fits tightly into the other only the screw hole becomes a circular mortise and tenon joint. Or think of it as a circular finger joint if you will with the fingers (threads) fitting between the fingers (parts of the wood sticking out on each side of the groove cut by the screw). We are using these "joints" to join 2 otherwise dissimilar materials together, in the case of the screw eye or a screen door hook or a cup hook, a piece of steel and a piece of wood.

Now we apply sideways pressure to those joints via a length of wire or cord connected to 2 of the joints and we add a new dimension to the mix, a changeable force. By applying leverage to one of the parts of our "joint", we test the strength of the overall joint's holding power. When we use something extremely short like the thickness of the attaching part of a D-ring for a lever we are applying so little sideways force (the static weight of the frame package factored by the angle of the hanging wire) on the screw portion of the joint that it isn't usually affected until such time as we approach the shear strength (that point in the stress of the screw where the shaft of the screw actually breaks off) of the screw itself. But you lengthen that lever by up to 1/2" as was mentioned about a large screw eye, say a size 208 or a 208 1/2, and you increase substantially the amount of actual strain you apply on the joint itself (the fibers of the wood in this case as they are the weakest part of the "finger joint"). Now, add to that the physics of a short wire and its inherent characteristics for increasing the amount of stress (force) on that part of our "joint" (the screw and its threads trying to rip themselves out of the restraining part of the joint, the wood fibers) by maybe 10 or 15 times the normal force applied to the lever (weight of the frame package) and you have the makings for a failed "joint".

It is difficult for most people to imagine a 10 lb. frame package exerting as much as 143 lbs. of pressure on a pair of screw eyes but it is a proved fact that we simply will have to accept for lack of understanding the physics of the matter. But these are common laws of leverage and friction that were taught in high school (well, they were taught back when I went to school!) and, unless those science teachers have been lying to all of us all along, they still apply to today's problems and should be respected for being proved and measurable and not simply theory. This is difficult for most people to grasp and was for me until my dad used some old fashioned ingenuity to explain the idea to me. Once you see the cutaway portion of a screw hole and take the screw and lay it in that cutaway hole, you can understand the basics of how a screw holds and what is happening when a screw pulls out of its hole from undue stress and strain. The general benefit of using 2 hole or 3 hole D-rings or Wall Buddies is the added strength the use of multiple fasteners (screws) adds to the overall strength and reliability of the hanging system.

This doesn't take into account the deterioration of the wood fibers themselves or dry rot or any other problem that is inherent with wood products.
 
Wallbuddies, Corporate hanging

Do you all sell
Wallbuddies​
in your shops? We
attach​
two
prepackaged​
courtesy hangers to the wire (if it has wire) on each frame so that customers always hang their pictures with two hooks. We
discontinued​
screw eyes years ago.
We sell
Floreat​
hangers in a
counter top​
display. We also sell Quake Wax and Quake Putty (Museum putty-same stuff). We take it with us on installations to keep pictures straight, although most installations are done with Z-Bar.

How are you all hanging corporate jobs?
 
I corrected spelling in my post, and now look what happened. Sorry.
 
Kirstie, you get an A for recognizing that you misspelled words AND that you bothered to correct them. :)
 
Kirstie:

With corporate jobs it varies from wires to D Rings to ZBars, depending on size. (And Security Hangers from some as well...)

We also always give everybody 2 prepackaged courtesy hangers.
 
What about the wire?

Framerguy said:
It is difficult for most people to imagine a 10 lb. frame package exerting as much as 143 lbs. of pressure on a pair of screw eyes .
Click to expand...

I often wonder as I attach the wire to the two hole D-ring ..... is my wire strong enough?

If 143 lbs of pressure are exerted on the 10 lb. frame package is my wire that is rated for 15 or 25 lb. strong enough for the 10 lb package? Granted I try to be in the 60 degree range but what if I miscalculated my angle?

Should the wire rating be on the weight of the package? How much should I add to the weight of the package to allow for the tension?

I have ASSuMEd the strength of the wire is based on the weight of the package ... or will I become one as artwork starts dropping to the floor... :confused:

(I love Wall Buddies)
 
Jeanne,

You got a chuckle out of me with your self analysis of "assumption"!

You can rest easy, a 10 lb. frame is gonna weigh 10 lbs. now and tomorrow and forever. (Or until it accumulates enough crud to gain some additional weight!)

The force exerted on stuff is different than the actual weight of that stuff but it is affected by the weight of the stuff if that makes any sense. For picture wire the force is the "pull" that is exerted along the length of the wire from end to end so to speak, not the shear strength of the wire or that force that will break the wire itself at any given point of attachment. The larger the angle, the more length of wire it takes to span from one point to another, (From one screw eye to another, for example.) and the less pulling force is exerted on each screw eye where the length of wire is attached to the screw eye.

Failure of a hung picture is going to happen at the weakest point of the system which is usually the fibers of the wood rather than the strength of the hanging wire or the size or strength of the steel wire that the screw eye is built out of. The more force that is constantly exerted on the length of the wire, the more stress is placed on the wood fibers at that point where they contact the threads of the screw eye and they will eventually fail and cause the frame to fall off the wall ................................ theoretically. In fact this probably doesn't happen as often as it should because of the irregularity of wood grain, hardness of the wood, or predrilling a proper sized hole to turn the screw eye into.

Anyway, if you are using 25# wire on a 10 lb frame and not stretching it banjo string tight, you should not worry in the least about the wire mysteriously breaking and making a mess on your customer's floor.

(Man, I sure hope I got all that gobbligook right and a few of you can understand what I meant to say!)
 
FramerDave said:
This diagram illustrates it all very well:
WireFig1.jpg



Didn't you do all the framing at the Tower of London?
Click to expand...

Explain the difference of the single screw going through the D-ring, and the single screw of a screw eye......

Now if you make a single pass through the eye, and then back along the run to wrap a tie off.... yes, you have created a fulcum.

But if you screwed the screw eye in until the eye is seated against the wood, with the hole of the eye facing vertical, then the wire is passed through from the underside up through than passed around the seat on the outboard side and passed again through the eye and brought forward and twisted on the bridge wire to tie-off. The bridge wire properly done should at a single point just almost meet the top of the frame..... but is always hung from two points set slightly in (about a finger length) from the sides... guess that would be about 60 degrees.

And that is what I was always taught was the "California" system.... because it will make it through an earthquake.... and I would think that that was why Don Pierce wrote it into the FACTS.... because his shop was about a rumble or three from the San Andreas Fault.

As for Obeche.... 3/4" #8 screw eye will do just fine... predrill with a 1/32" bit, good up to a 24x36 garish carved pecerdillo frame beyond that, you're on your own.

As for quality hardwood becoming scarce, Jim? May I suggest that Vermont Hardwoods, Garrett Moulding, and Picture Woods would prove you wrong. But if we only look to the Asian importers.... you're entirely correct.

But what in the world is "split grain wood"?
 
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