“Do you know how you tell the difference between a Chem student and a Physics student?”
“The Chem student washes his hands *BEFORE* he goes to the bathroom”.

There’s some truth in that statement, especially with regards to corrosive chemicals…

Tonight I decided to give the toner transfer photomachining process another go. The toner transfer material is from PulsarFX and purchased from DigiKey Corp along with the rest of my electronics components for the bullet flight sensor and … some other projects.

First, I did up the “photo mask” in Adobe Illustrator. Since the toner side is face-down on the etch surface, I do a “transform – flip” operation to mirror the text:

Top to bottom are: plain paper proof of the printout, plain paper proof of the inverted mask, and the actual mask itself, on the toner transfer paper. At a buck something per sheet, it’s advisable to do a plain paper proof every step along the way

The toner transfer paper works by heat and pressure. They sell a unit for doing this, but I am not about to spend a few hundred bucks on a special laminator. So I liberated the clothes iron and set it to linens, and tried my hand at ironing on the transfer:

Well, bummer. I had cleaned the brass piece with my Festool random orbital sander with 220 grit sand paper. Turns out a brillo pad works better.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again, and try harder:

My Dad would call this “paying tuition”.

After playing around with different methods of applying pressure, I finally got something good:

And a piece promptly flake off as I start blotting the workpiece dry. (the paper is dextrin coated, and releases after sitting in water a little bit, kinda like a water-slide decal).

After about 45 minutes in the ferric chloride (yeech!) etch tank, this is what I managed. Not acceptable, but at least I have an idea that the system works. Kinda. The etching is about 0.2mm deep. The design intent had been to sand to the black (raised) border, then fill the inside etched area with an ink, leaving the brass text raised against a black background. The piece would then be matted into a framed artwork along with the panorama being presented.

(For now, I’m just going to stick to my wax seal and signature, thank you very much.)

(This is “R&D”. Failures are not unexpected; what’s important is documenting how things failed, and learning from it.)

That out of the way, let me show you what *not* to do on framing a piece of artwork:

Don't do this!

The cuts are technically perfect – or pretty damn close.  There is some blade deflection in cutting the double bevel – something I’ll fix the next time by building an extension to the mat cutter.  But in the process of working out the border sizes – I had forgotten that I’m now framing things with a 3″ border instead of a 2″ border.  As such, I cut an almost perfect double-bevel opening 2″ too wide.  And if not for the fact that my cheap test ink-set in my Epson 4000 (the subject of another article) looks like mud – I’d be tempted to just re-crop the image in LightRoom and run a bigger print.  This was about 2, 3 hours of work down the drain.  (It took 2-3 hours because I was documenting as I go for this blog post – and screwed up the first go-around by cutting the bevels backwards.   In theory, I should be able to do this in an hour).

Now, that out of the way, let’s look at the framing tools.

First, the mat cutter.  Progressing up from a simple ruler / linear guide (such as Logan’s Adapt-a-Rule) system are board-mounted mat cutters.  They all feature some sort of adjustable fence system, with a base for the mat to be fed onto.  After playing with an Altos mat cutting system that my Dad owned, and the Logan mat cutters at Daniel Smith, I settled on the Logan Intermediate+ 450 model.

The 450 had a few BIG advantages over Dad’s Altos 4501:

• Cuts on the line.  Logan’s design for all their cut heads (pictured below) is that the cutter head cuts on the edge of the guide.  To use it, you simply line up the cut line under the guide’s edge, hook the cut head onto the rail and go.  A U-shaped feature on the cut heads guide the cutter to prevent it from wandering.  This is a HUGE step up from the Altos design, which requires offsetting the guide from the cutline (much like a Skillsaw).
• The 450+ cuts up to 40″ wide.  40″ is the “magic number” in framing.  Pre-cut metal frame strips comes in sizes up to 40″, and 32″ x 40″ is a standard size for matboards and foam board at any well-stocked crafts store.  It is possible to get matboard and frame extrusions larger than 40″, but I’d expect the cost to go up signifcantly, along with the transportation headache.  Besides, very few people have the wall space to hang a 40″+ piece of work, or files with the resolutions required to generate such pictures in the first place.
• At about $160-170, this is a fairly affordable tool.  The next step up is about $350 and adds a longer squaring arm, which I can build myself.  This is a good price point for the features you get.

The Logan mat cutter comes with two cut heads:  a Model 702 Bevel cutter and a Model 701 straight cutter.  The names are fairly self-explanatory:  the Bevel Cutter cuts a 45 degree bevel for the mat openings, while the Straight Cutter cuts mats to size with a straight 90 degree down blade angle.

One other attractive thing about the Logan system is that their blades are widely available.  Michaels, and chances are most local arts store, will carry their replacement blades.  This is not true with the Altos system.  It pays to change blades often (each blade can only make about 10-20 cuts before losing its optimum sharpness) and so blade availability is a BIG deal.

The 701′s blade is fixed – retracting it requires unscrewing the mount screw and physically moving the blade.  It is however very rigid and will cut 4 ply mat board like butter.  Just be careful setting it down, so you don’t gouge up artwork, or ding the blade’s razor edge.

The 702′s blade pivots down into the matboard.  The silver line scribed onto the edge indicates where to start the cut – simply line it up with your reference mark, press the silver button to pin the cutter to the board, and push the handle down.  It’s pretty straightforward.

Not quite a framing tool, but invaluable nonetheless.  This is a Bessey Vario-Angle  strap clamp - used in carpentry and fine furniture making to hold pieces together while glue dries.  As with any tool, it pays to get a good tool and take care of it.  Retails for about $30.00.  If you’re local in Seattle, you can pick this up at Hardwicks, or Woodcraft.  Just don’t bother with Home Depot.

The purpose of this tool is two folds:  When assembling pre-cut metal frame extrusions, it allows all 4 members of the frame to be held in tension and aligned into correct position before the corner brackets are tightened down.  When building wood frames from molding strips, it applies even pressure on all four corners while the glue dries.

Harbor Freight makes a much cheaper alternative.  I personally have not used it, but I believe it will work.  As the Harbor Freight design uses a ratcheting mechanism instead of a screw and nut mechanism to apply the tension, I expect that there will be less granuality in applying clamping force and pressure.  I would consider the HF alternative if I were building multiple wood frames and need to setup the clamping for hours, but for metal framing work, I am quite happy with this little tool.

Rounding up the tool collection is a screwdriver to work the fastening clamps for the metal extrusions, as well as a marking pencil.  I use 4H pencil lead in a 2mm lead holder – this is the same tool that I started learning drafting with, some 20 years ago.   A 4H pencil lead can be honed razor sharp for really clean marking lines.  This particular lead holder has a sharpener built into the cap, which is good for obssessive-compulsive engineers sharpening their lead.

Now that we covered the tools – stay tuned for the next post as to how to mat and frame *correctly*

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framing, printmaking