Framing the Diamonds

Monday and Tuesday this week were spent putting the painted masonite panels of the Diamond Grade panorama into — or more accurately — on top of “frames.”

The frames were built by Jim Orman, our wood-working friend across the street. Jim has a good way of understanding what I need when I can’t name the thing I have in mind. In this case, I had seven  12 x 16″ 1/8 inch panels that I wanted to display without any frame around them. But I needed some kind of support so they could be hung — putting a screw into an 1/8 inch panel, regardless of the paint thickness, didn’t seem feasible.

The additional logistics problem was that these couldn’t be mounted on a support frame before I painted them because they had to travel in the little red Honda to eastern Oregon and back. So Jim measured and measured again and took the panels to his workshop and made the supports, and then I took the panels off to Diamond. I painted them, brought them back, let them dry a couple of weeks, and then we were ready to glue and clamp the panels onto the framing.

Of course, we had problems. The masonite had perhaps shrunk 1/8 of an inch in the desert heat; the supports were 1/32 of an inch off. Jim, being a gentleman, did not say the words I was thinking. He had made the supports in such a way that they could be dismantled and “shaved.” He took all seven back to his workshop.

Then he came back and he clamped. I watched. “There is,” he said, “no such thing as too many clamps.

And here’s what they will hang like when they are mounted. This photo was taken with them on the floor, because I have other details to deal with — like touching up edges and getting the hanging hardware installed. But this was a big step in a fairly long process.

I don’t know about fences and neighbors, but skilled neighbors sure do make good ones. –June