This is my first real woodworking project, so bear with me. I decided to create a picture frame (18×24) for a print I bought for my wife for Christmas. It's made out of 2" wide mitered pieces of oak. I used a dado blade to cut the lip for the contents of the frame. However, in my stupidity, I didn't test fit the glass after it was clamped (I did before it was clamped, but yeah, stupid me).
So now it's glued and I need to take about 1/8" off of the inside of the frame. It seems to be due to the fact that it's not perfectly square since it's only on the one side of the frame. I started sanding with 100-grit sandpaper as that's the roughest I had around. I'm sure you can guess that I'm not making much progress with it.
Should I invest in a set of chisels and work it down that way? I thought of using a rougher grit paper, but not sure if it's going to work for the amount of material that needs to come off. Any other suggestions on what to do? Thanks!
Best Answer
A block plane will work up to a point. Use it parallel with the grain, and in the direction that the wood grain is rising (since no grain is perfectly parallel) to avoid tear-out. They make some wood planes without sides, which can be useful for corners, but may risk tear out for your purposes.
Instead, the design with a blade near the very front may be the best for this task:
With each of these, you'll eventually need to carefully chisel out the corner.