Frame #266 measures 24″ square and was designed for Diane Eugster’s painting titled Trail Dust. The closed corner frame was made using my 15° process and I’ll admit I probably went into way too much detail on how it’s made — sorry! A feature of this frame was using clavos to add that western vibe to it so feel free to scroll down through the tutorial on milling the Basswood to create that 15° profile. The finish is Real Milk Paint using a 9:1 ratio of Black Iron and Soft White.

I’ve been asked by a number of my readers how to create my 15° frame from 1″ thick material which can hold 3/4″ thick canvas. As you know, I also use my blog to remind myself how to do different process — at 75 years of age it helps! In any case, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know if this tutorial helps you as well, I’ll write it using my best, retired shop teacher format as I can. For this frame I’m using 5/4″ rough Basswood that I get from Peterman Lumber here in Las Vegas. My preference is to get their 8″ and wider, I make my frames about 3″ wide so this gives me the least amount of waste. After flattening one face with a scrub plane it’s surfaced with a power planer. I usually get 1 1/16″ to 1 1/8″ thickness from it.

I prefer to cut each leg of the frame to length (plus miter allowance) separately which makes it easier to control on the saw. I strongly suggest to also cut at least one additional piece 10″ to 12″ long to use as your trial piece to set up your saw. Set your blade at 15° and lock it, it’ll stay the same for the entire job. Lay out both ends of your trial piece with the sliding bevel set to the angle of the tablesaw blade. To ensure that all cuts are made in the right place, I lay the frame legs out on the tablesaw in the exact orientation for each cut — believe me, it’s really easy to make a cut on the wrong face or edge.

Cut 1: I forgot to take a photo of this one but the face of the frame will go against the fence and the board is set on edge. Setting the fence for about 3/4″ works for me but experiment. This cut is what the frame sits on to raise the sight edge. I did a blog on this some time ago but have changed the order of cutting a bit for safety, you may want to check that blog out.

Cuts 2 & 3: These are 15° angle cuts on the sight and back edges. Note that the angle on the back edge will become shorter when you make cut #4. For this frame I measured about 5/8″ in and the cuts are made with the piece on edge. After these cuts I use a smooth plane to remove any mill marks on the face of the frame.

For this frame I wanted to add some bead details and used a Veritas small plow plane with a 3/16″ bead cutter. This is an option, if you decide not to simply go on to the next steps. You need to do this before cut #4 so you have a 90° corner to guide the plow plane.

Cut #4: This cut will allow you to easily clamp the frame together for joining. The profile is upside-down for this cut. This creates a 90° edge for clamping.

Cuts # 5: This is tricky and creates your rabbet. I use a saddle square to “guesstimate” the depth of the rabbet (5/16″) and draw a line on the sight edge. Use that to adjust the blade height and then set your blade on line #5. You can see the orientation of the piece on the fence. I make the sight edge about 1/4″ thick. This is my set up block and you can see my initial cut was a little too deep!

Cut #6: To finish the rabbet this is how the piece is oriented. Again, I use a saddle square to “guesstimate” the depth of the rabbet, drawing a line on sight edge. Adjust the blade to the line and put your pressure on the outside of the piece, not by the fence where it’s angled. As a general rule I need to sneak up on the depth but that’s what the trial piece is for.

The final step is to cut the miters and assemble the frame. When you cut them be sure to apply pressure on the angled cut at the outside of the frame, not the sight edge. I use biscuits to join my frames and the same thing applies here, the biscuit joiner needs to be held securely to the angled cut on the bottom of the profile.

Final Steps:

Once the frame is removed from the clamps it’s time to do any clean up of glue, especially in the grooves between the beads. Any slight variation at the miters can be fixed with a paring chisel. This slideshow demonstrates the process for creating the areas for the clavos. Chisels were used as shown and you’ll notice I drew arrows to remind me of the grain direction, the miters required caution.

After locating the clavos location with dividers I used a scratch awl to deepen the holes so they were visible after painting. To install them they were first pressed in by hand and aligned to the center of the space. To protect the finish from the hammer I placed a piece of hard plastic and tapped them in. They did tend to twist so before they were completely seated I used those pliers with the plastic jaws to align them and tapped them into place. They have an uneven bottom edge which digs into the wood preventing them from twisting.

All things considered this was a good challenge and fit for this painting. Like I mentioned at the beginning of this somewhat lengthy blog I’d appreciate any comments about it — let me know if you make a 15° profile frame and how you liked it; Thanks — John