I had a few picture prints that I purchased for my house. I took them to a craft store (which shall remain nameless) and the quote for putting a frame and glass on them blew my mind. The quote was somewhere in the ball park of ~$200 per picture and I had 5-6 prints. “Ridiculous” – I thought.
So I looked up how one makes picture frames and learned it pretty much only took a router (and maybe a router table) and an ability to cut a relatively accurate 45 degree angled cut. I bought the most highly rated (beginner) router and table which happened to be (at the time) the Skil 1830 Router and table (RAS800). I bought a Yonico bit on Amazon that looked fancy and went to town. In hindsight the bit I bought was a little too complicated for a first attempt and probably should have been used with multiple shallower passes, but at the time I didn’t know and just ground the hell out of the thing. The result was about what I probably should have expected: the finish was uneven and choppy. I then used a miter box and saw (from Stanley) to try to cut the 45 degree ends. This did not go well. I had an extremely hard time cutting that damn wood evenly. I threw that miter box away after this project and have never regretted it.
The end product was complete crap – the miter cuts didn’t match well and left huge gaps in the corners and the routing was not smooth at all – but I put it on a crappy wine and design painting and called it job complete. This frame was meant to be practice for my larger prints but considering the results, I was pretty discouraged by this outcome.
