Logan Pro-Framing F400-1 Fitting Tool

I boughtthis to fix an antique frame i have (Buffalo Bill picture he gave to his sister). It worked very well and was a piece of cake to use. Highly recommend if you need to fix any old frames.

It gets the job done. Though it took some time to get used to it.

I was a little leary ordering this fitting tool as I needed it to pierce through a walnut frame I made but it worked perfectly. It came with 50 flexible inserts.

I was a bit leery about this item based on a couple of reviews but even the best product will receive a couple of bad reviews. I only make a few frames per year and didn't want to spend more so I gave it a try. My first frame was made of purple heart wood. I didn't even think about how hard this wood was to work with between splintering and dulling router bits. I had to squeeze so hard to get the flexible inserts into the wood I was afraid that I would break the tool. It held up but half of the points buckled instead of going into the wood but I was finally able to get 8 of them into the frame. Needless to say I was disappointed in the tool until I did the next frame. It was made out of red oak and when I squeezed the handle to sink the first flexible insert it went in so easy I thought that I didn't load a point in the tool but it was there. The next seven went in just as easily and I realized it wasn't the tools fault on the first frame it was the wood. It is one of the few woods that I have worked with that makes oak seem soft by comparison. I've used it with several other wood frames and it is always a breeze. Loading the inserts one at a time would not be good if you did production work but for an occasional frame it is fine. As long as your woods of choice aren't ironwood and purple heart wood this should do well for you. I've loaned it out to a couple of friends and they asked where I got it and how much it cost because they wanted one of their own and at this price it is worth it. This tool does exactly what it is designed to do and it does it well.

I have been making frames for more than 40 years so I have a lot of experience with various ways to hold in the backing materials(s). For years I have used glazing points (the kind with the little right angle "wings" that make them easy to insert) and a stiff putty knife. That way you have lots of control. If you drive those points so that the wings are almost flush to the inside of the frame, you get a consistent penetration and should you need to remove one, they are very easy to remove with the same putty knife.I have yet to find a "tool" that gave me the results I wanted and this one is no exception. The quality is marginal but, in fairness, the tool is not that expensive. It does the job but suffers from several problems:1) you have little control over how deep into the tool the the "point" sits (I think it is unnecessarily deep). You can bandaid the situation in a variety of ways, but the design is just not very good.2) you can not get the point truly parallel to the backing material as it is driven into the frame material; the result is that you tend to crush the edge of the backing material. Not sure if this is a significant problem but it bothers me.3) I am not sure that the tool would work with a hard frame material. So far I have used it on a few frames made of pine. There was non trivial bending and torquing of the tool as the point was driven in. I was cautious about apply to much squeezing forceIn conclusion ... I am going back to my old, completely manual method.

Sturdy and very easy to use--even for someone with arthritis in their hands. Do read and follow the instructions and it may take a couple of tries to get the hang of how it works. This is an especially good framing tool for framing pastel paintings where no hammering or jarring motions are acceptable. This tool can be used gently, where a gun-like tool would cause pastel dust to fall onto the glass. I used the rigid points and found them quite acceptable. My frames were composite material and the points went in easily. Be sure your frame rabbet is deep enough--at least 3/16" should ideally be available to insert the points above the art (glass, art, mat and backing material sandwich). If the "sandwich" is flush with the back of the frame, it will be very difficult to insert the points properly, if at all.

I made frames for some paintings from my mother. The frames were from Poplar, Cottonwood (both reletively soft woods), Pear (a medium hard wood) and Japanese pagoda (a very dense hard wood). The flexable points that came with the tool worked very well in the Poplar and Cottonwood and I like these enough that I will order more of them. But they could not be driven into the Pear wood frame. In fact when I tried to use more pressure you could see the rod flex and then the part of the tool that holds the points cracked and bent. I was able to pound this back so that it is still flat enough to use on soft wood, but I would have liked the tool to have a better strength material holding in the points. I switched to using 18 gauge brads for the Pear wood frames and these worked fine, But for the really hard Pagota wood the tool could not drive the brads in at all. So overall, for soft woods this works great, and it can be used on medium hard woods with brads, but not on hard/dense wood.