The "Preserving Family History" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Working at Grebinger Gallery, finishing one of the most unusual framing jobs for a customer.  Keith, the owner and former student and yearbook photographer of mine at Manheim Township High School, called me into the gallery to show me a job that had just come into the shop.  There laying on the counter was a .22 rifle.  Seems a customer brought in a rifle that his grandfather's had given to him.  Since he didn't want to use it himself, he thought he would have it framed to hang on his wall.  

The final product.

Something that Keith and I had never worked with before and certainly one of the heaviest items we have ever framed.  The customer had picked out a rather deep shadowbox frame to go with a black suede mat to be used behind the gun and along the edges of the shadow box frame.  How to hold it in place and make the hangers look as unoffensive as possible was a problem.  I made a drawing of the stock and measured the diameter of the barrel and told Keith I would make some wooden pieces at school where I still worked in the print shop.  Used a 2x4 and traced the pattern onto the flat surface, cut it on the band saw and sanded the edges.  On one of the pieces I drilled a hole for the barrel to slide through.  Then I sprayed painted the pieces with a flat black paint.  I must admit, against the black suede they were slightly visible, but not obtrusive.  The frame had to be cut, glued, nailed and metal under-pinners put in place.  Frame size ended being 48" long and 12" high.  Most mat board comes in 40" lengths as does glass, so Keith had to order oversized mat board and glass.  I cut the piece of glass, inserted it into the frame and lined the sides of the frame with 1/4" foam board to hold the glass in place.  

Here you can see the wooden pieces that hold the stock and barrel in place.
the plaque on the right tells the story of the rifle that is held by it's owner.

Then a layer of black suede was put over the foam.  We have no equipment to manually cut lengths of mat board longer than 40", so I figured out how to do the task on our computerized mat cutter.  After these pieces were in place I worked on the board that would hold the rifle.  Glued the suede mat board on a piece of 3/8" plywood for stability and laid the gun on top of it.  Placed the pieces of wood I had made in place and fastened them with glue and screws from the reverse side.  Now, the barrel was held in place, but the stock could still slip from the wood supports I made if I turned the gun over to put in in the frame.  I decided to use heavy picture wire to tie the stock in place by running it through the leather strap grommet and then through the wood behind it.  Presto, it worked fine!  The final touch was a small brass plate telling the story of the rifle which I placed under the barrel on a layer of suede.  Cleaned the suede and placed the two units together.  Fastened the units in place with metal holders, covered the rear of the frame with protective paper and put "wall buddies" hangers in place to hold it to the wall.   Proud of the way it turned out and Keith just emailed me a photo he took of the customer holding the project.  It will look great on his wall.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.