v-nailing by hand

bumpon

Grumbler
Joined
Sep 23, 2004
Posts
33
Loc
Louisiana
Okay, I used to work in a fancy schmancy gallery and loved it, but I moved. I got the impression that you had to have an expensive v-nailer or router/thumbnail setup to join frames from working there, and it never even occurred to me to just nail the v-nails in from the back by hand! Someone brought this method to my attention, and I've been doing this in my home-based business for a while now, and have never damaged a frame! All it takes is a small hammer, a pair of needlenosed pliers (to hold the v-nail straight while you nail), and a slightly padded yet firm surface. Can you believe how easy (and incredibly cheap!) this is? Does anyone else do this? What's the point of spending thousands on v-nailers and routers? It doesn't even take that much longer than using the expensive equipment! Any comments? Am I doing something horribly wrong here and don't realize it?
 
I can name a couple of benefits to using a v-nailer. Sure, you can hammer in v-nails just as you can drive in brads with a hammer but the speed and ease and consistency of using a v-nailer or a brad nailer simply is more efficient.

By the time you have pulled a half dozen v-nails off a strip and figured out which edge is the sharpened edge and gripped it with your needlenosed pliers and lined it up with your miter so the 2 legs are even across the joint and then take a swing with your hammer and hope for the best, I have already moved on to the second or third joint and have finished my frame joining well ahead of you. That's not so much of a savings on a single frame but it sure does leave alot more time for productive framing work when you have a dozen frames to join.

I am not at all sure how you intend to keep the mitered joints tight when you are working on the frame upside down either. The profiles of many mouldings won't allow you to simply butt the joints together and clamp them in a miter vise.

But we all have our own priorities and focus and you may not need a v-nailer at this point in your career.

BTW, welcome to the Grumble!

Framerguy
 
I have av-nailer and can't imagine being able to hold the v-nail in a pair of pliers. I know it wouldn't be impossible, but I'd have to "fix" more mistakes than I can afford! Having said that I have got a customer who swears by this "tool" Logan Joiner Me, personally I'd swear at it! The frames he brings in have little bits of the v-nail sticking above the moulding, and the joining takes too long for my preference, forcing the wood apart instead of together.

I'd get a manual v-nailer before I got either of these, but that said I think you'd get better, and more consistent results with this tool than with a pair of pliers.


Glad to hear that it works for you. and Welcome to the Grumble!
 
You'd have to join glue up the frame before you drove in the v nails. People do join frames this way but I can't imagine why. My v nailers will put two v nails per corner in a 2" 16 x 20 frame in under 40 seconds. We can apply glue and join in under 2 minutes. I imagine that's orders of magnitude faster than driving in the v nails by hand.

BTW, if you've used good glue and done a good job of joining the frame and letting the glue set up, there is no reason to put the v nails in the frame in the first place. Modern glues don't "dry out" and their joints don't lose strength over time, or at least time as we measure it.
 
I use to manage three galleries and a frame shop. We too had all of the nice equipment and time saving techniques. Now I work in a small frame shop and gallery, mine. I have been able to preform all of the same services for my clients that I could before. Now it takes a little more planning, time and outright thought, but I can still do it. Don't get me wrong, one day I will have a CMC again, and an v-nailer, but for now I have a little more time on my hands and a little check- book.
Warren, I use good glue, and clamp it tight and its working just fine.
Congrats on finding a way to make it work Bumpon. Thats using your noggin.....

Danny boy
thumbsup.gif
thumbsup.gif
thumbsup.gif
 
Hey everyone, thanks for the replies! This is one of the nicest forums I've ever been to.

I guess I should've been more clear. I always sand my frame legs to a perfect 45 degrees, apply glue liberally, and then join them up in the vise. When the glue is set (but not completely dry) I drive the v-nails in. So, the frame is already joined and I don't have to worry about keeping the legs aligned while I'm nailing. I still make sure that I have the correct size and type of v-nail for each frame. I do this as I go, corner by corner, not with the frame fully assembled. I know it takes a tad bit longer to do it by hand than with a v-nailer... but I also remember the hassle of changing the attachment out of the v-nailer for different v-nails, etc. I love the thumbnails, but I must say that that is time consuming... routing, vacuuming, gluing, then driving the thumbnails. I guess for my volume of work, I just can't see spending the money on the equipment when this works just fine for me, in what seems like nearly the same amount of time.

I learn something new every day, too... I didn't know that you could glue without v-nailing or thumbnailing... how many of you do this? I would maybe worry about the long-term stability.

Thanks everyone!
 
I didn't know that you could glue without v-nailing or thumbnailing...
Sure you could , and you could also poke yourself in the eye with a sharp stick. But why would you?

Every once in a while someone will come along with a great new glue and tell you that the glue is so strong that you don't need to nail the frame. Remember the hot glue gun on steroids that came along a few years ago? And some people will tell you that if you have an underpinner, you don't need glue.

The glue is what really holds the frame together, and if done well the glue bond is stronger than the wood itself. As Warren pointed out, the glue we use today (CornerWeld in particular) is somewhat flexible and not as liable to fail as older types of glue.

Nails, V-nails, wedges, etc. are all meant to hold and pull the corners together tightly while the glue dries. Just as importantly, they also serves as a backup in case the glue bond ever fails. Even though the glue bond is strong, all it would take is one good jolt to the frame during a move to break a corner apart. Or suppose the frame is stored at some point in its life in an attic or basement. Numerous expansion and contraction cycles could easily cause the glue bond to fail. Without mechanical backups the frame will come apart in four easy pieces.
 
Oh my gosh. I am so glad I joined this forum... CornerWeld? I've always used Elmer's Carpenter's Glue! Is that bad? Also, I don't think I would try simply gluing the frame, for the reason FramerDave said... I've seen so many repair jobs come in with one or two of the corners barely hanging on by the v-nails... without v-nails, the whole thing would've fallen apart, the art could be damaged, the glass could break, someone could get horribly disfigured, etc. Okay, maybe the last one is a little extreme.
 
I think your next step should be a manual underpinner. I have a Cassese, and I love it. It only cost me $600. and it works great.

The only problem I have is that it will only do small to medium mouldings, so to do the really large ones I join what it will in the nailer and then flip the frame over and do the hand method. It has really worked well for me and not hard on the checkbook.

It also is very time saving on the average job. I've had my shop for 5 years and the I started with the thumbnailer and its too big a mess and very time consuming.

This thing is a real jewel. And since it's manual it doesn't need a compressor or even electricity. I can move it all around my shop if I want to rearange. All of the parts are replaceable and since it's a Cassese, you know it's very well made!

kaffeetrinker_2.gif
Jennifer
 
The only reason I use v nails is that they allow me to glue and join frames very quickly. If I had to glue up frames before I inserted the v nails, I wouldn't use them. I think I can make a better argument for not using them than has so far been made for their use.

My training as a cabinet/furniture maker has left me with an abiding distrust of mechanical fasteners. There is not one joint in cabinet making that is improved with mechanical fasteners. In fact mechanical fasteners will hasten the destruction of most joints (probably, all). The only excuse for ever using them is speed.

While a glued miter joint isn't as strong as the wood itself as has been asserted, it's plenty strong enough for its application. Miter joints involve 45% end grain and end grain glue joints are very weak, but miter joints are still 45% long grain and long grain joints are stronger than the wood. Picture frame joints are not subjected to undue stress, nor should they be, and for their purpose, glue only joints are fine. I've got frames I joined 27 years ago that are as tight as the day I joined them and I imagine they'll still be tight 27 years from now, so experience suggests that a glue only joint is sufficient for a picture frame.

Sure the joint is going to be subjected to expansion and contraction, but the two mated pieces of wood in the joint are almost always from the same species and more often than not from the same trunk of the same tree. They will expand and contract together at the same rate but expand and contract they will.

If a frame joint has two v nails in separate positions, they will aggravate the consequences of the uneven wood movement by trying to stop it leading to a greater chance of joint failure than if they weren't used.

Frames are abused and joints do fail, as do joints in furniture, and having repaired both furniture and frames I can assert strongly that glue only joints are way easier to repair than joints with mechanical fasteners. In fact the presence of mechanical fasteners often makes invisible repairs impossible.

Glue joints in picture frames are strong enough for their purpose, they're less likely to fail and they're easier to repair in the absence of mechanical fasteners. As to the very unlikely event of a failing joint leading to damage to artwork, I might add my observation that joints rarely all fail at once.

If there is worry about the strength of glue only miter joints, there is a time honored framer's trick that will make the joint even stronger: glue two legs together and allow the glue to set up for a couple of minutes, pull the joint apart and reglue. All my comments are based on a well made joint with glue applied to both surfaces and on the joints being clamped firmly but not with so much force as to drive the glue out of the joint (a starved joint).
 
Hm. I'm confused. Probably because I learned framing in one gallery from one group of folks, and consequently learned things only one way. How do you glue the legs together AFTER you v-nail? I was always told to coat the entire mitered face of one leg with an even, liberal coat of glue, only after you've set one leg in the vise at the perfect position for joining. How would you do this if you've already v-nailed? How do you get the glue in there evenly when the legs are joined already? I'm curious. We also did this with the thumbnailer... routed, THEN glued in the vise, then when it was set up, inserted thumbnails with a little more glue for good measure. This always resulted in awesome, perfect frame corners for me.

I'm just soaking all this info up like a sponge... I love this forum. THanks for all your advice. I am curious, has there been a discussion on the Cassese manual underpinner on this forum? I'm curious. Also, I personally hate the mess and hassle of a thumbnailer but have a wierd superstitious trust in it. Any comments on this? Who likes them? Who hates them?

Thanks guys!
 
Of course, you can't add glue after you've v nailed. You can do both at the same time, though. Spread the glue, insert the two legs into the v nailer, insert the v nails and go to the next corner. The v nails become your vise, holding the legs together untill the glue sets up. This way you can join a frame in under 2 minutes and go on the the next frame.

I don't know what to say about joining the frame and allowing the glue to almost set up and then inserting thumbnails or v nails; seems pretty dumb to me and a heck of a waste of time. When you rout out the legs, you're removing bondable surface area making the joint weaker than it could have been and wasting time to boot. Inserting v nails in an almost bonded frame is simply taking the unnecessary risk that the force of the v nails going in might break the bond or, worse, that a v nail might twist out the back of the frame.

The only sensible reason that I can imagine for putting v nails or thumb nails or brads into the corner of a frame is to able to go immediately to the next corner whithout having to leave the legs clamped waiting for the glue to set up. Inserting the v nails or thumb nails after the frame has been glued together defeats the whole purpose of the two systems, to make joining frames faster and easier.
 
Not to beat this topic to death, but as I said, I am quite curious as to others' methods, since I only learned things one specific way, and am still pretty much doing things that way.

Does anyone else have an opinion on Warren's advice? The way I was taught, we were constantly cautioned that if you're trying to do something fast or easy, you shouldn't be a framer. We were never given any incentive to doing things fast. Three to four average sized jobs in an eight-hour day was considered the max, and if we did any more than that, our work was highly scrutinized- and we even had a Wizard. Granted, we had to interrupt our work to do designing.

Anyways, joining up a frame in under 2 minutes seems almost like a sacrilege to me! Of course, there are always those highly skilled human beings who can do things faster than the rest of us and come up with the same fine product. I always let the corner stay in the vise until it is quite stable- 15 minutes or so. I considered the v-nail or thumbnail to be insurance if the glue gave or the corner popped. I always feel that to have perfect corners, which is something people can't always get from Michael's, etc, is highly valued by discriminating customers.
 
Back
Top