Wood D

The warping of the bristol board the manuscript pages are painted on meant that they needed to be mounted to something more sturdy and able to remain flat while keeping the pages flat. I came up with a framing concept shown below. It involves mounting the page to a heavier mat board, having a thin mat board frame the page, and then mounting the mat board-backed page to reclaimed wood that would sit in a picture frame.

Some people might have picked up the mat boards first. It doesn't really matter which items you get first  since you need them all to complete it. I decided it would be more fun to check out the reclaimed wood first. I've drove by some, but I've never been to a junk yard or any other kind of salvage place.

I wasn't driving, so I took a couple pictures when the car wasn't moving too much.

My destination lead me through the industrial district in the southernmost part of Detroit just above River Rouge area.

Here's a little piece of Detroit history for you. On my way there I saw the Boblo Boat (SS Ste. Claire) docked along the Rouge River. There used to be an amusement park called Boblo Island that the boat would ferry people back-and-forth from. There were a couple other boats further down the river along with it that I wasn't able to get a shot of.

My first stop was the Architectural Salvage Warehouse (ASW). I had never been to a place like this, so it was pretty interesting. There's a lot of vacant and decaying houses in the greater Metro Detroit area, so places like this get new stuff all the time I'm sure.

I really wanted that redish cabinet door. It was that fake, composite wood pulp stuff with a faux cover on it, but the red would have looked great with the Caroline Graphic Renewal page. As long as the ends wouldn't split when I went to trim it down to size, that is.
The man I spoke with said they wouldn't sell it without the whole cabinet though, and they weren't even sure how much it would cost because they hadn't set it up and put it together yet. I didn't need a whole cabinet, and it didn't have much of an old look to it anyway, so I kept searching.

They didn't really have much wood for being a place that does architectural salvage. It was mostly stuff to install or put in your home: ceiling fans, windows, doors, furniture, etc.

They didn't have anything close to what I was looking for besides that red door that I wasn't going to get. They said they have another warehouse with more reclaimed wood and less home furnishings over on the East Side. That sounds more like it.
The other locations I was planning on heading to were either not open or had their warehouses located even farther away than the other side of town. So I hopped back on the Edsel Ford Freeway over to their other warehouse, and it turns out it's just down the block from the old Packard Plant.

If I didn't have more to do back home, it would've been fun to explore. I'll have to come back before the city tears the rest of it down. Piles of brick and cinder blocks don't scare me.

Partially torn down buildings adjacent.

YOGRT's a regular "up" name around Detroit.

ASW's other warehouse.

I really liked their banner. Not the fanciest type, but the saying is pretty solid.

I found some really great boards and a couple panels that will work perfectly for my idea.

There's something satisfying about woodworking. It's one of those more manual labor-type tasks that I enjoy. This wasn't my first time using a table saw. I started a whole other project involving wood pallets a couple years ago that required a lot of table saw usage. Another story for another day.

The panels had to be trimmed down which wasn't a problem, but the boards were not wide enough. This meant I had to saw the board into two long sections, and get the remaining width I needed from the second section. I thought it might look better split into three pieces, so I cut the first section in half. The second section would go between the those two pieces.

I didn't have enough money to grab boards and panels for all the pages, so I'll have to come back. I'm really excited to continue now that I'm down to the last steps before the pages are finally ready to be printed and framed.

When I start gluing and attaching the separated boards together before they're framed I'll take some pictures and show you guys how that works. I'm not sure the matting deserves its own post, so the next time you'll see the pages they'll be fit to be called finished for good. Tomorrow will be something different though, so check back for more.