Building A Better Palette

For the last meeting of my July woodcut class I had pulled out the old palette I had made for painting classes back when I used to paint.  It had also been used over the years as a portable inking palette, and with everyone in that class printing that last night, I knew we would need it.  I have a new round of classes scheduled to begin next week.  Don't know the numbers yet on that, but it wouldn't hurt to make an improved version before then, just in case I need it again.

I made the above item over 20 years ago and didn't remember exactly how I had done it.  I do remember the origins.  My years at Montclair State coincided with a day job in Hackensack, and next to the building where I worked was a then unoccupied one story building.  Facing a driveway between the buildings was a large multi-pane window, which at one point had started falling apart. The framing between panes of glass was rotting away, and many of the panes had fallen out and shattered on the ground.  One day I noticed a pane of glass hanging out into space, only still attached at its bottom edge.  The next stiff breeze would likely send it to the ground, so I decided to save it from a certain death and stashed it in my car.  I mounted it and used it regularly at Montclair, and now and then as a portable palette for inking blocks.  When Molly and I designed the Studio, we made two palette tables (glass permanently mounted to surfaces), so I haven't needed it lately.  Putting it back in use a few weeks ago reminded me that it had problems.  The paper tape that held it together was old and dirty, and gave no protection from the heads of little nails I had used in construction.  I didn't expect that it would be too difficult to make a better one, though the effort ended up being spread out over three days, the delays caused by needing to purchase materials.


DAY 1

Before I could do anything else, I had to tear it apart and see what I had.  Used a screwdriver to tear apart the tape and reveal the base.  The glass turned out to be about 10" x 20".  Not sure how to otherwise attach it to the lauan base, it seems I had made some rough narrow strips of lauan as a kind of frame.  At the short ends they were attached to the base.  A few little pieces of wood on the long sides kept the glass from sliding out those sides, and two longer lauan strips covered the long edges of the glass, holding it in place.  The frame was held together with dozens of staples and 1/2" brads.  It took only a few minutes to pull all that off.

I was surprised to see that the edges of the glass still had bits of whatever cement had been used to keep the window in the frame, along with the frame's dark green paint.  Not sure why I had left it on there back then (maybe fear of cracking the glass), but the old mounting system hadn't required removal, so it wasn't an issue.  That wouldn't work this time, so I carefully knocked it all off.

I came up with an idea to center the glass in double thickness window mat, which would match the thickness of the glass.  Then I'd make a wood frame from flat wood strips- the frame would overlap the glass on all four sides and be screwed through the mat into the wooden base.  Since the only item I had with me there in the Studio was the glass, the rest would have to wait until I acquired the other items.

Later in the day I went to the local home center, and picked up an 8" strip of flat moulding, along with some supplies I'll need for class.

DAY 2

In the morning I went down to Manasquan to mow the lawn.  Before leaving I went through the basement wood pile and selected a good solid board that would be wide enough for what I had in mind.  From my place I took an old piece of matboard, a little too damaged to be use for framing art, but good enough for my purposes.  Up in the Studio, I measured my base board and cut a window mat with very narrow sides- it would fit on the wood and snuggly hold the glass in place.  I didn't have enough matboard to make a second window, so I just made mat strips the same width as the sides of the first window.  I glued the mat window to the board, and glued the strips on top of that.  The old piece of white paper that had backed the glass before was too small now (this design will give me another inch of glass surface in both directions), so I cut a new piece from a roll of paper I had with me.

While that dried I made my wooden frame.  I was afraid that my power miter saw would destroy the thin wood, so I cut the mitered corners by hand with a coping saw.  Laid it out, and made little adjustments with saw and rasps to make it fit better.  I drilled pilot holes in the frame parts in places that would hold them solidly and not be too close the glass.  I had some 3/4" wood screws of a suitable thickness, but I realized that they would barely reach through the wood frame and the mat, not very secure.  Best bet would be to get some longer screws and finish the job tomorrow.


DAY 3

On my way to the Studio today I stopped off and bought a 99 cent package of #6 wood screws, 1" long.  I test fit everything, putting in a few screws just far enough to hold the wood in place.  One slight change of plans- I put down a little silicone caulk (left over from another project) along the perimeter of the glass.  This would help it adhere to the frame a little better and seal it along the edges.  I screwed it down tightly on all four sides, and with that it's pretty much finished.  Results are shown above, along with the scraps from the previous version.  At some point I'm going to try to scrape up the dark residue of tape, paint, and ink that show the old edge of the palette surface, but all my scraping tools are packed up at home for convenient transport to my Belmar class, so I'll get to it later.  This new palette is much heavier than the original one, but it's more solid and you don't get poked by nails when holding it, so I think it's an improvement.