At a recent club meeting I showed a wall hanging made from a ceramic tile and a wooden surround, I also explained how a tile should be fitted into the wooden surround, I also brought a cut through of the surround for all to see exactly how it needed to be made in order to not break the tile after it’s been fitted.
At the meeting I was asked if it could be possible to put this information on our web site, I had made this information available at a previous meeting by way of a few print outs and one member actually had a copy with him.
In order to make this information available to all our members and the public at large I have put this information on line, you can if you wish just copy and paste the information into your own computer so that you can then make a print out of them. The information comes in 3 parts, one of which has 4 pictures.
Picture 1 shows a finished wall hanging. Picture 2 is the back of the wall hanging, showing the chuck recess in the middle and the 25mm brass wall hanging plate near the top. Picture 3 a top view of the turning method and the positions of the silicon adhesive. Picture 4 shows the side profile on the cut away section, note the dish shape in the middle above the chuck recess.
The reason this is necessary is to prevent the tiles from cracking or breaking, if the tile is fitted too tight or onto a very flat background below the tile, the cold from the ceramic or marble tiles reacts with the wood to make the wood bow upwards towards the back of the tile cracking or breaking it in the process, this method eliminates 90% of the problems.
If you are to make some tea pot stands using a ceramic tile or a marble tile, you will not require the wall hanging plate, you will however need to leave the tile sitting slightly more proud of the base to allow for less heat to be transferred to the wooden surround, also think about how it would be picked up, the edge profile should be slightly concave. All the rest of the procedure is as for the wall hangings.