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Common Mistakes Your New Framers Make

Andrew Lenz Jr.

Andrew Lenz Jr.

Frequent Poster
Messages
206
Loc
Santa Cruz, CA
Company
Lenz Arts, Inc.
I'm curious, what are mistakes that you see over and over again from almost every rookie framer?

Here are just a few to start off:

- Shadow box using etched non-glare glass. (Fuzzy.)


- Large frame with thin wood moulding. (Inadequate support.)


- Designing a mat with thin borders. (Looks bad.)

- Mounting newspaper or magazine pages to white backing board. (Text shows through.)


??


Andrew


p.s. One would hope that the errors are caught by the more experienced framers before they can be implemented!
 
My biggest mistake when I first started was about glass. I was hand cutting my glass, but I did not like the idea of cutting big heavy sheets by hand and I didn't know what sizes to buy. And I didn't want a lot of waste because I was concerned about safely storing. And I was only going to start with CC.

So I got the bright idea, that I would buy a box closest to the size of the mat / frame, I needed, and that way I would only have to cut two sides, and not have a lot of scrap. Well....not a well thought out plan.

My first was for a small card, and I needed a piece about 7 x 9-1/2, so I bought a box of 8 x 10. My next piece was a 13 x 17, so I bought a box of 14 by 18... You get the point, pretty soon I had 8 box sizes of Just CC.

Of course I have worked through all of that glass by now, (except, I still have 71 lites of 8 x 10 of old cc if anyone is interested) But I have learned. I'm now down to only 4 sizes of CC and Museum, 16 x 20, 18 x 24, 22 x 28, 32 x 40. And I could probably get by without the 16 x 20, because I can cut that from 32 x 40, but I do get a lot of requests for 16 x 20 from artists.
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Concerning Mounting newspaper and magazine articles to white mounting board, well I did that recently as the customer wanted to see the article on the back from the back of the frame. I did the 2 sided frame, but when you look closely, you can certainly see some of the ink from the front.
 
Yep, Russ, I can see that. Somewhere along the line, 30+ years ago, someone here ordered a box of 8x10 standard glass. That box is still around somewhere never opened!

I was thinking more along the line of mistakes by new staff as opposed to a new shop.

Andrew
 
Mis-Measuring. They forget to come in on the image. Or they forget to check the image to see if any will be covered by the mat or frame. If some is covered the image may need to be floated.

Another would be drymounting. They forget that drymounting will devalue art and want to drymount everything so it is flat.

Originals they forget to see if a canvas is square.

Watercolors with ripples they forget to tell the client that it will still be rippled when framed.
 
No. 1 most common mistake: Incorrect measurements, usually recording the paper size, or only the image size when white space around the image is required

No. 2 Choosing a frame that does not have adequate depth

No. 3 Not checking for square
 
Again, thinking about myself, as I am a 1 person shop. When I restarted about 7 years ago, after a 40+ year break, I made all kinds of mistakes. Those I remember best are:

1. Forgetting that the mat has to cover the edge, so the window size is not the same dimension as the outside of the image, which is not the same as the outside of the paper. And not telling the customer about the edges covering.

2. Not suggesting wider mats when the customer said they wanted narrow mats. Oftentimes offering better suggestions results in better repeat sales.

3. Thinking that Museum Glass was expensive. Once I realized it is a bargain for the features it offers I started to sell lots more. I'm embarrassed to say this took a couple of years to overcome this mindset.
 
Measure wrong? I still do that.

We haven't had a rookie framer in over a decade, so we don't make a lot of mistakes in our shop, but nobody here makes more mistakes than I do. We've developed a culture of everyone checking everything. We look out for one another and that is a good thing. We're all willing to admit our mistakes, rather than try to hide them, which is another good thing. And we often talk about how to avoid making the same mistakes again, so the daily routine of framing around here is an ongoing learning experience for all of us.

In the salad days, I hired a couple of framers who seemed afraid to make mistakes. Of course they still made mistakes, but tried to hide them, which was a worse mistake than any of the other mistakes. I would never hold a framer responsible for the cost of any ruined materials, because I would rather have mistakes than over-caution, or analysis paralysis, deception, or defensiveness.

I have forgotten most of my mistakes and moved on to making new ones, but the embarrassing mistakes are most memorable. In my first two years of framing, I drilled through the front of three frames when installing hanging hardware. I still remember those three mistakes. Vividly.
 
-Not checking the back of a print or photo for stickers before dry mounting, or checking the release board for debris

-Not writing down instructions, because they will remember them 10 days later.... LOL

-Forgetting to get name and phone number of customer.... seriously!

-facing UV glass wrong side out

-Mixing up masking tape with framers tape


I'm sure if I thought longer on this, I could write a book. If I had to guess the number of framers I trained since 1995, I'd say it was close to 30, and most of them made the same errors. :)
 
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