The equipment revolution: moving from hammer and nail to state-of-the-art products, framers make more time and faster money with the newest in equipment technology - Framing Business News

Art Business News, Nov, 2002 by Jennifer Wong

Can't imagine life without your cell phone, e-mail, answering machine or microwave? What about your mat cutter, underpinner or miter saw? In the past 20 years or so, framers have witnessed sweeping changes that technology has brought not only to their personal lives but also to their frame shops. "With the accelerated advances technology has made, we have rocketed from the horse-and-buggy era into the 22nd century in the framing industry," said Avery Wieder, CPF, a framer for 28 years and co-owner of Chelsea Galleries in Cleveland. "Everything is so much better," he said. "It's worlds apart."

Indeed, in the machinery available to today's custom framer, virtually every piece of framing equipment has changed, except perhaps for the trusty hammer, which is used less and less these days, thanks to all the innovations. Underpinners, speed vices, computerized mat cutters, conservation glass, mounting methods, hanging systems, moulding choices and materials, mat board selection, even picture hooks have all changed in a relatively short period of time.

And what do all these changes mean for the framer? Ease, efficiency and huge savings in time, which can add up to more money. "If your overhead is going up and you can't control that--you need to find better ways to produce to make money faster," said Fred Schneider, a framer with 33 years experience and the plant manager for County Frame in Holtsville, N.Y. "And that's the most important thing in business today." Plus, added Schneider, most of the machines are affordable and will pay for themselves after five years. After that, the machines give the framer a clear profit.

Joining Machines

Underpinners are now a must-have tool for framers, but Nancy Meyer, framer for 30 years and president of Row House Gallery in Milford, Ohio, vividly remembers life before the V-Nail[R] fastener. "I remember stacking pieces all over the floor," said Meyer. "We used to hand-join everything in corner vices--we'd join an L, leave it sit, and do another one. We'd do about six of them in different vices, take them out and stack them on the floor and then we'd do more. The next morning, we'd go back in and join whole frames after the glue dried," she said. Today, Meyer counts the machine as one of the greatest advancements in the framing industry for saving her valuable time.

Schneider believes his underpinner gives him a 60-percent savings on his time and triples his speed of production. In addition to waiting for the glue to dry, before the underpinner, framers had to contend with nail holes. And filling nail holes "took forever," said Schneider. The framer would use nail hole filler mixed to match the color of the frame exactly, cover the hole and wipe off the frame.

Underpinners insert nails into the frame corners to create strong frames that won't fall apart and eliminate the tedious job of filling nail holes. Arriving on the scene for framers in the late 1970s, the basic function of the machine has stayed the same, said Bob Pistorius, president of Pistorius Machine Company.

In the past, framers had to use their own judgement as to where to put the nails and how many to use when joining a particular moulding to get the tightest fit. This is a challenge, and something that would have to be taught to each employee joining frames. Now framers can enter that information and store it in a computer database with Pistorius' newest underpinner, the VN2-E. The framer assigns each moulding a part number and inputs that number and the optimum location for both the top clamp and the horizontal rabbet clamp, the number of fasteners and the location of V-nails to be driven in. This initial data is stored in the computer memory database. Later, when the framer needs to join a moulding, all he does is enter the part number, and the joining information is retrieved from the database. The clamps are then positioned in their optimum location and--viola!--strong corner is created with the optimum fit.

Mat Cutters

Wieder remembers cutting mats using a razor blade and a straight edge. "If you had a T-square you were advanced" he recalled. And on the topic of old oval cutters, he said, "If you could get an oval in one or two tries, you were good." Wieder said the manual mat cutters that framers are using today are light-years ahead of what was available since there is almost no maintenance and the blades are better. "In the old days, we didn't have mat stops, and every razor blade was different. We used standard No. 12 single-edged razor blades that we bought in boxes of 100. You had to crimp these blades in a certain way, and they were never the same thickness," said Wieder. "You were lucky to get two or three mats out of the same blade."

Quality manual mat cutters have been around now for more than 20 years and offer the framer a variety of functions. The Fletcher-Terry Company's F-2100 manual mat cutter has been around at least 10 years and remains a best seller among framers. It has measuring stops, an angle guide, base extension and a clamp lifter, which holds the bar up to allow framers to use both hands to move the mat freely as they work.