I have a map of the USA that I've owned since the summer of 1999, and sine then its been hung on the wall in more houses than I care to remember. In around 2005 I bought a cheap frame for the map and when the frame collapsed a few years later, I glued it back together. Over the years I added my state quarters collection to the plexi-glass with first putty and later epoxy. The map had character in spades, but really it was too tatty to go on the wall in our new office.
I started off with some of the same black walnut we used for the desk tops, and I cut a rebate on the router.
The rebated pieces were mitered to make the basic frame and the cross-members were made by cutting rebates on both sides of the material and rabbiting both ends.
The frame was assembled with clamps....
....and the corners and joints were v-nailed with a manual underpinner.
The assembled frame was finished with the same flat varnish as the desk tops and left to cure for a mind numbing twenty-one (21) days.
I made some cork boards to go on either side of the map. I used some cork tiles I found on the interwebs and mounted them onto some scrap pieces of ¼ inch plywood with contact adhesive.
Here's how the map came out after assembly:
It looks better on the office wall than it does in this photograph.
At the same time, I also knocked out frame for my World Map. This map is actually a 4000 piece jigsaw puzzle which we put together about six months before we moved house - after the puzzle was completed it was carefully divided into quadrants and large pieces of sticky paper were applied to the back. Two years later and it needed a frame, which I wanted to make out of oak. This time the molding was a bit more intricate and required three passes through the router table.
The frame was assembled in the same way, and then stained with, ironically, dark walnut, to achieve a tone similar to the dresser it will hang above. The stained frame was also finished with the same flat varnish and left alone for twenty-one (21) days.
Came out pretty nice:
