Clamp a Picture Frame the Old Fashioned Way

It seems no woodworker ever has enough clamps. Master craftsman George Berry, "The Woodguy" shows how to clamp up a picture frame with clamps that you make yourself. George Berry, "The Woodguy", has a master's degree in woodworking and furniture design from the Rochester Institute of Technology. His studio is home to a number of his custom pieces, including a $12000 armoire, built from vacuum-formed Brazilian rosewood, a handsome work that won the prestigious Lincoln Center Arts Festival Award for "Best of Show." A reporter from The New York saw the piece and described Berry as a "first-rate artist."

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Closed Caption:

hi I'm George bury the wood guy
it's been said no wood worker has enough
clamps so I'd like to show you a trick
for gluing up a picture frame without
clamps or without steel clamps clamps
you make yourself called folding wedges
this is what woodworkers used before
they had steel clamps these works so
well then when i first learned this
trick about 35 years ago I made a bucket
of 60 of these things I keep them under
my workbench
I use them all the time the first thing
you want to do is take a piece of
plywood and draw the outline of your
picture frame on the plywood then put
your folding wedges in every corner and
screw down the outside wage so it
doesn't move
take a paraffin block and rub paraffin
at every corner
so you don't wind up gluing your picture
frame down to the plywood
now I didn't put your picture frame in
place right on the pencil lines
this is a good trick for large frames
too because large frames can come
especially gold leaf ones can come from
the factory with a little workin I'm a
little wine twisting them
so when that happens in this it in the
corner is all
not quite matching you can take another
phone wage and put it over here and
screw it down to the frame to the
plywood that way and keep that flat to
the plane of the wall which in this case
is the plane of the plywood
now after that's in place then you put
your folding wedges all around make sure
they're in place make sure you're on the
lines and then you can tap them with a
hammer
all the way around making sure you stay
on the line
this is also the trick i like to use
when i'm going up
irregular shapes like a circle so you
can see that they
it's hard to find steel clamps to do
this sometimes the old way is the best
way if you'd like to see more tricks
visit me on my website would guy . com