TOH Making oval Frames the 1880's way.

[Larry Peterson]

I have been binge watching the current season of This Old House on my DVR.

I just watched the 5/4/2014 episode that had a cool segment on making an oval frame using 150 year old tools. You can view this here: http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/tv/video/0,,20802100,00.html

Its scene 4 about 9:10 seconds into the video. From the description:

Norm visits the oldest continuously operating mill site in America where David Graf makes an oval mirror frame for our house using 150-year-old power tools

The giant lathe used to make this was way scary. You couldn't me near it with a 10 foot Lathe Turning Tool. Because it's an oval shape when they turn it on the huge lathe, it looks like its going to explode and fly off and kill everyone in a 6 mile radius.

I don't know how they make real wood ovals now but it has to be in a different manner. OSHA would kill this shop in a Boston minute if it wasn't also a museum.

 

[JFeig]

I remember the first time that Norm was at that shop to make oval frames.

 

[Prospero]

I remember seeing that. I imagined the whole building shaking.

 

[Larry Peterson]

I remember the first time that Norm was at that shop to make oval frames.

He mentioned in the segment that he was there 20 years ago.

 

[realhotglass]

Thanks for putting that up Larry, I make convex glass for these old frames all the time, and great to see the joins and profiling of these.

Wonder how they did the old cathedral shape and rectangle shape (with shaped corners) as they couldn't do them on the lathe other than oval / circle.
Suspect they were just more hand made.

Me, I make the frames from mdf and simply route them.

 

[Peter@PrestoFrame]

I always wanted to go see this place, thats a great video, thanks. The oval blanks are made basically the same way today, the profile is done in one or two shots on a shaper. I do some wood turning and that thing flying around would definitely take some getting used to.