Design process of a wooden frame for paintings – Labeltoile.fr
Design Process for a Picture Frame – Labeltoile.fr
Designing and building your own canvas frames is no easy task. It's not simply a matter of assembling four pieces of wood and imagining that you can properly stretch a canvas over them and hope for a lasting result.
As with the creation of a ready-to-paint canvas, certain manufacturing steps must be followed to achieve an acceptable final result. Staples, nails, screws, glues… are to be avoided. Only a perfectly precise mortise and tenon joint, accurate to the millimeter, will guarantee a quality frame.
Below you will find the different manufacturing stages, from the selection of the wood to the assembly of the pieces with spacers if necessary.
- Choosing your wood: The choice of wood is paramount in crafting. Indeed, a wood that is too hard, like oak, will be difficult to work with, and a wood that is too soft will not produce the desired result. We nevertheless advise you to work with the latter type of wood, but if possible, sourced from mountainous regions. The tree species found in these areas grow much more slowly due to cooler temperatures and a climate less conducive to rapid growth. For example, avoid pine from the Landes region. The temperate and windy climate of this region provides an abundance of wood, but unfortunately, the wood is often loose, grainy, burled, and susceptible to fluctuations in humidity.
- Drying: The wood must be dry, free of cracks, knots, and burls. It can be worked at a moisture content between 14 and 16%. Below 14%, it risks breaking or splitting. Above 16%, it is not suitable for working.
- Making the Frame: Depending on the frame size you want to create, determine a molding size sufficient to ensure your artwork has adequate rigidity. Some people believe that the thicker the wood, the sturdier the frame. This is incorrect. The strength of your frame comes from the choice of wood and its drying quality.
- Preparing the molding: A canvas frame molding must consist of four sides of different sizes. A long side, often called the "thickness," corresponds to the edge of the frame onto which the canvas will be attached. A short side, called the "flat side," will be against the wall. A short side is located inside the frame, and finally, there is a slope steep enough to prevent the canvas from touching the molding and to avoid marking it with brushstrokes or palette knives. On both sides of this slope, lightly sand the edges so that they are beveled and not sharp. This technique will prevent tearing the canvas when it is stretched.
- Then comes the technical part: creating the mortise and tenon joints. This is a crucial technique for making a keyed stretcher frame. If the frame isn't assembled this way, it will be impossible to insert the tensioning keys used to tighten the canvas if it becomes damaged. The tenons must be precisely designed to the millimeter to ensure there is no play between the different pieces, thus preventing any issues with the frame's stability. For large formats, cross braces or crossbars should be added approximately every 50 cm to support the main frame and prevent deformation of the stretcher during canvas tensioning.
- Assemble and mount the frame by tapping the different pieces into place with a mallet. Reminder: No nails, screws, staples, or glue! Precision work is required… The corners must be perfectly square and sturdy: don't hesitate to use squares if necessary (a warped frame often originates from poorly secured corners). The corners must not be sharp to prevent the canvas from tearing. A light sanding is often beneficial…
Your frame is now finished and ready to use. Becoming a manufacturer isn't something that happens overnight. Today, this expertise remains an art and must be mastered to ensure your creations last.
At Label Toile, we've chosen to partner with a leading expert in the field, Châssis France. We offer approximately 200 sizes of unstretched and stretched canvases, and can also create custom frames and designs upon request! All your projects and creations are possible.
So trust us… You won't be disappointed!
✍️ Find all our canvases, frames, standard and custom sizes at:
👉 www.labeltoile.fr
✍️ Find the websites of our local partners: