Where to donate old picture frames?

[Liz Chase]

Hi all,
I'm new to the custom framing business and was wondering if any of you veterans have suggestions for what to do with old, used picture frames. When customers have us re-frame their art, they usually don't want their old frames back, so we're getting quite a collection of them. I hate to throw them out (unless they're really ugly), but I also don't want to generate competition for ourselves. Any ideas? Thank you.

 

[Gregory K. Norris CPF]

They cost you money because they take up space. I have never found a regular recipient to donate them to, despite being in a university town with an art department and most of he public school art teachers as customers.

I have concluded that for us, anyway, the dumpster is the best place to put them.

 

[Cliff Wilson MCPF]

I have a few VERY CHEAP local artists that take them and refinish them.
About a third of what I take in.
The rest -> trash.

 

[Kai Vanuffelen]

Hi Liz,
My fathers breaks them up and puts them into the woodburner. If he does not pick them up in time, they end up in the big bin at the back of our workshop.

Old frames customers bring in are scratched and out of fashion so they are past their use by date.

 

[Ormond Williams MCPF]

The half decent ones, I give to an Op Shop to sell. The others go into the dumpster.

I would use caution if burning mouldings that have 'compo' on them. They could give off dangerous fumes!

 

[Ellen Collins MCPF]

Once a year we have a 'yard sale'. We sell the frames for $1 apiece and they are always the first thing gone.

 

[Gregory K. Norris CPF]

I'd like to echo Ormond's warning about burning frames or scrap. The wide variety of woods and finishes used in modern picture frame moulding and finishes can produce some dangerous fumes.

 

[Kai Vanuffelen]

My father Rob has a habit of burning things he shouldn't. mdf, painted and treated timber. One day he cranked up his burniner so high that the chimney running up thru the open plan two story building became orange and we could see right thru it. He reckons the burner is designed to incinerate at high temperatures to leave very little ash. Outside you do not notice the burner is on, as there is no smell. Only the occasional flame shooting out from the top.

In the early eighties when we were still living in Friesland, my father had a framing shop in a small town, where everyone knew each other. He once bought a huge tree with a trunk as wide as an armspan of an adult. It came on a trailer towed by a farm-tractor. It had to go thru a narrow alleyway to the side of our house, where it stayed for several years. The farmer backed it in to the alley and our neighbor, nicknamed Kip (chicken), who had a cycle-repairshop was reading his newspaper.

He heard noise and looked out his window. There came this tree right thru his window. My father had a chainsaw that was not long enough. It was getting stuck all the time. So my father and I cut the tree with a 6' long two handled handsaw. The blisters I got from that. Our small backyard looked more like a demolition-site.