Building a Floating Mirror Frame - Woodworking

Mirror Script

Today I’m building this mirror frame for a client that
wanted it to appear like it was floating off the wall.

Now I realize that the shadows in the picture are hiding the
floating aspect, so you’re just going to have to use your imagination.

One of the key ingredients to getting perfect miters is to
start out with perfect square stock, so I took the time to set up a feather
board when ripping to width.

I mitered one end of all 4 pieces, and then I set a stop
block up so I could cut the corresponding sides 
to the exact length, without them getting pinched between the fence and
the blade.

I needed to cut a really deep dado to accept the mirror and supporting
back panel, so instead of trying to hog out that much wood  with a stacked dado set, I did a 2 pass cut
on the table saw.

The 1^st cut was to establish the width of the
dado.  Then I reset to the fence and
blade height to cut the depth. 

This mirror was so heavy it made me grunt when I lifted it, so
I decided to reinforce the corners with floating tenons.

I clamped the pieces together to add a little stability
while I cut the mortises.

Since band clamps are primarily useless tools I opted to
attach some temporary clamping blocks with CA Glue.  These blocks gave me something substantial to
clamp to, and they don’t hide the miter on the outside corner like a band clamp
does, so I can be sure the corners are tight on all visible edges. 

I added some paper under the glue joints to protect my
pristine looking assembly table and checked the diagonals for square.

Once the glue dried, I broke off the glue blocks and went to
work cutting the back panel to size.

I squared up some alder for the back inner frame

Marked them to length

Cut them to length

Added some pocket hole screws so I could secure the inner
frame to the outer frame.  This gave the
whole piece some rigidity and strength to hold that large of a mirror.

Then it was time for some assembly, for the inner frame I
just used some glue and brand nails

I dropped in the mirror,

Painted the back components black so they would disappear in
the shadows

Dropped in the back panel.

And Finally I Dropped in the back inner frame and secured it
with pocket hole screws.  Here you can
see that the inner frame is inset, this is what will give the illusion that it
is floating off the wall. 

The whole thing is hung from the wall by the inner frame on
a French cleat. 

Thank you for making it to the end of the video, if you want
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Originally posted on my main woodworking blog