Back at it again!

Well hurricane Florence kind of put a damper on working on the State Fair entry last week. It rained for 4 solid days here where I live in NC. I am not at the coast but it was supposed to come here. But  as it approached the coast it went south and below us then behind us as it headed north. Winds were not bad just plenty of rain. We suffered no loss of power.

I did order a 3d printer and it arrived on time last week during the storm. I put that baby to good use right away. I designed and printed some clamps to help glue up picture frames. I only had two older clamps which only allowed me to do half the frame at a time. With my current design I can glue up the entire frame in one shot. It is part 3d printed and part wood work.

This is the corner clamp I designed it in Fusion 360 and I sliced it with Cura. It took about 4 hours to print each one and I printed 4 of them. The reason for printing this rather than cutting it out of wood? Well my table saw sucks at cutting 45 degree corners. One of the two tracks for the miter is loose and will not cut consistent 45's. So lets print it!

Here is the corner clamp.

Here is is with the wooden parts cut, drilled, and with my frame in it. The size of the frame is 15 7/8 x 18 1/8.

It is a simple clamp which only requires a single clamp to clamp all 4 corners.

I used my table saw and cut the dado on the frame before glue up. It was a pain as I once again made the edge of the project very small only 1/4" on each side. So I only needed to cut a 5/32" dado into the frame. Yes I know insane. Maybe next time I will remember to make that edge bigger so I have some freaking room for mistakes.

Then I had to cut the glass for the frame. I have never cut glass before. I watched the videos it seemed like something that is simple to do. Not at all complicated. You just have to measure it correctly and use the glass cutter to score the glass and then snap it along the score. Seems simple and it actually is just as simple as it seems! The tool is cheap and glass is pretty cheap. I used to always just have the guy at the store cut the glass. It does not cost anything to have them do it. But as a maker I was thinking I need to do the glass cutting.

Here is my piece of glass I cut and it came out perfect.

Here is the backer with my logo and a close up of the logo. Putting my logo on projects is not really hard and all I do is use my ink-jet printer. No I don't put the wood in the printer. What I do is take a piece of wax paper tape it to a normal piece of paper and then make sure it prints on the wax paper. Once it is done the ink will remain wet on the wax paper. I then put the wax paper on the wood and the ink is absorbed by the wood and the logo is on the wood! I have read people use freezer paper also to do the same thing and that is available in 8.5x11. But my method works just as well.

Here is a close up of the logo.

Here is the backer with natural danish oil finish.

I used a trick today to help with gaps during glue up. You just have to save some saw dust(man glitter). What you do with the saw dust is you add it to glue to make your custom exact color matching wood filler. You can sand it and you can finish it as it is mostly wood rather then glue.

I just have apply finish to the frame paint the backer and assemble. Two weeks left till I drop it off. I've got this no problems because all the larger power tools are done. I was able to use the dado blade on the frame today to cut out the space needed for the glass, fret work, and the backer.

Thanks for looking!
Jim