About two weeks ago I built the Barnwood Frame. I built it with Whitewood boards from Lowe's. This is one of my first projects (and my first with my new miter saw) so its safe to say my cuts were not exactly perfect. But I glued the corners, clamped them together with a corner clamp, and drove one nail through each corner. My last trim piece didn't fit very well, so I ended up cutting a new one, but it looked fine. I posted it in the brag blog if you want to see it. It's stained dark brown. There were no gaps in the joints when I built it or for the first few days.
Anyways, last night, I was looking at the frame, and noticed that the joints in two opposite corners had opened up. The gaps are not in the trim pieces, but in the 1x3s that outline the picture. There's a good quarter inch gap where the two boards meet. It almost looks like the wood shrunk? Could this happen?
The frame has been sitting on the mantle over my fireplace and my husband SWEARS he didn't drop it or anything!! Haha.
Any advice would be helpful, I am a beginner and don't know very much about this stuff.
Tara
claydowling
Tue, 01/10/2012 - 14:22
The wood shrank
Wood does this. Wood from a home center does this more, because they're trying to keep prices down. To do this they buy wood that is wetter and less stable than what other, higher-priced suppliers carry. As wood dries it shrinks and often twists or bows.
There are two common techniques that professionals use to deal with this problem.
The first is to only use higher grade wood that has been kiln dried to a very low moisture percentage. This means that the wood isn't likely to dry further, so it won't move very much.
The second is to use some supplemental joinery to strengthen the frame. A miter joint is incredibly weak, and the nail does not add long-term strength. A common technique is to secure the corner with a spline. This is a narrow cut that you've put into the corner running with the grain of the wood, and glued a thin piece of hardwood into, with the grain running across the joint. This is quite strong. Here's a picture and a short video of someone creating one: http://theapprenticeandthejourneyman.com/tag/spline-miter-joint/
They're showing a very machine intensive process there, but you can do all of that by hand (I did recently).
Tara Kirkland
Wed, 01/11/2012 - 06:23
Thank You
Thank you so much for your input.
I bet it was the quality of the wood. I guess I need to get familiar with some better places to buy wood around here. Glad to know that I probably didn't really do anything wrong.
The spline technique is very interesting!
Thanks Again!!
Tara
Tara Kirkland
Wed, 01/11/2012 - 06:23
Thank You
Thank you so much for your input.
I bet it was the quality of the wood. I guess I need to get familiar with some better places to buy wood around here. Glad to know that I probably didn't really do anything wrong.
The spline technique is very interesting!
Thanks Again!!
Tara
claydowling
Wed, 01/11/2012 - 07:24
Some clarification
I used to work as a picture framer, during a dark time in my life, and your construction method is exactly how a frame shop builds a frame. One nicer Michigan based frame company used something called a butterfly spline, which is a bit more complicated but very strong and looks really nice. The good part about a butteryfly spline is that you can build one with just a small inexpensive router and a simple template, making it easy to mass produce on a budget.