My nephew received a very nice world map printed on canvas that he wanted to have framed. As we talked, he thought it would also be a great idea to make it a magnetic map so he could add pins to his travel destinations.
To begin, we obtained some thin sheet metal he helped me clean up and prep for gluing. I then used a grinder to cut the metal to the correct size and we glued the canvas map to the sheet metal. Once that was complete, we laminated the sheetmetal to a piece of 1/8 inch plywood to give the map some structure.
Next, I milled some Wenge into 2 inch by 1 inch boards and inlaid strips of Zebrawood of the top to fabricate the frame stock. From there I used my router table to add the front chamfer (for decoration) and the back channel (were the map will mount in the frame).
The frame is about 4ft x 2ft making the 4 ft sides too long for my frame jig which cuts the perfect 45º angles. So added some ruler marks to the frame stock allowing me to offset the frame stock in the jig so I could still use the it to ensure a perfect 45º cut.
Clamping also posed a problem because the frame was too large for my Bessey frame clamps. So, I disassembled the clamps and daisy-chained the straps of the two clamps together. This gave me double the length of straps in order to wrap around the frame.
The frame was also too large to safely fit my spline jig I usually use on my table saw (splines are the pieces on the side-corners that add structure to those joints). So, I designed two new jigs that allowed me to accurately route out channels for the splines with my Dremel tool and a downward-spiral cutting bit. (Ignore the mismatched frame stock in the pix – I recreated the setup with scrap wood after the frame was complete.)
After that, final assembly went very much like any other frame… just larger.
