Metal used for masking (magnets)

I am in the middle of building my screen. I am ready to start planning for my masking around the border and I need some input. My screen consist of a DW laminate sheet glued to some backing board for stability. This will be screwed down to a wooden frame that I have built.

I will be gluing magnets to the front of the frame. I plan on building my masking panels out of some sort of styrofoam and gluing a piece of metal to the back. This will be wrapped with black velvet and then stuck to the frame held by the magnets.

I know many of you have used magnets/metal to stick your masking on. Can you please tell me what you used for the metal? I have looked at pieces of sheet metal at Lowes/Home Depot...but they seem a little thick and possibly difficult to cut. What have you guys used?

Thanks!

Troy

[wbassett]

Troy check back in the heating department. They have sheet metal used for heating ducts that is very thin and flexible. It is no thicker than a business card, well maybe two.

Just be careful because they also tend to be very sharp and you could end up with some stitches if you don't watch out. Once it's wrapped it will be fine.

[Harpmaker]

Another possible solution might be to use Magnetic Card stock or Magnetic Tape on your masking panels. This might work even better than small bits of steel and it has the advantage that it can be cut with a good pair of scissors.

Here is a link for the Avery cards at Staples, but you might be able to find them at Wal-Mart for less, same with the tape.
http://www.staples.com/office/suppli...s_10051_SEARCH

Harpmaker wrote:

Another possible solution might be to use Magnetic Card stock or Magnetic Tape on your masking panels. This might work even better than small bits of steel and it has the advantage that it can be cut with a good pair of scissors.

Here is a link for the Avery cards at Staples, but you might be able to find them at Wal-Mart for less, same with the tape.
http://www.staples.com/office/suppli...s_10051_SEARCH

Hmmmm...that's interesting. I guess you are talking about the reverse polarity...flipping the magnet over and having the magnetic surfaces attract to each other. That would probably give a tighter fit too. I will look at all these options. Thanks for the suggestion.

[tenzip]

The magnetic tape and cardstock are fairly weak, if you put a layer of velvet (or anything) between them, I doubt you'd get much stickum out of them. If there's nothing between the two magnets, it would probably work fine.

I'd suggest getting some of those little neodymium magnets, the ones you can barely pull apart, and either using 2, one in masking, and one in screen, or using one and a chunk of steel. Depends on what you have between them. Do some testing and see what looks like it will work. I bought a bunch of them for a project some time ago, I think they were 25 cents each for a magnet about 3/8" square. They'll give you a blood blister if two of them slap together with your skin in between!

If you have an old hard drive laying around, you can get the magnets out of it, they're extremely strong. Be careful with them, they're also extremely brittle, and break quite easily.

I went to the heating department at Home Depot at lunch today and saw the metal sheets that wbassett was talking about. I think that will work perfectly. I will have about four or five magnets glued on each part of the frame. The pulling power of each magnet is five pounds. I think that gluing a piece of this sheet metal to the back of some foam, then wrapped with velvet should work fine. Thanks for everyone's suggestions.

[tenzip]

Take lots of pictures during the process, so we can see how you did it. It's always good to see how somebody else did it.

After gluing the lamiate to some hard board and screwing it down to my frame, I am left with a 2 inch border on my wood frame all the way around. This was where I was going to put my magnets (the frame was built with 1x4s). Since my laminate is glued to the hardboard, the screen sits about a 1/4" or more higher on the wood frame...meaning that the screen is not flush with the frame or anywhere close.

I am now worried that when I glue my magnets to the wood, that the rise of the screen will hurt the masking and it will either not stick to the magnets, or there will be a gap between the screen and the masking (because of the angle).

I hope this is making sense...

I am now thinking about using velcro. They make really good velcro that will glue itself to both the frame and masking panels. Since the velcro is slightly thick, it will probably make up for the difference in thickness of my screen...and when the masking panel is applied, it will be close to flush.

Anyone here had any experience with using velcro? I just want to make sure I am not going down a bad path (and spend extra money for nothing).

[Harpmaker]

In my experience, Velcro can take quite a lot of force to get apart; since you are going to use Styrofoam panels I would hesitate using any adhesion technique that might require enough force to dismantle to endanger the Styrofoam.

If I understand your problem correctly, it shouldn't be too big a problem to build the backs of the magnets up using wooden shims until they are flush with the screen. Depending on what equipment you have, it may be a simple as cutting thin slices from a wooden dowel the diameter of the magnet. When doing something like that I don't bother installing a zero-clearance plate in my table saw, I just put down a strip of masking tape so the normal gap in the regular plate is covered, then the little bits don't fall though. It works like a charm.

Something I meant to clear up but forgot,, is that I was thinking of using the magnetic card stock as a replacement for metal on the Styrofoam panels, not as a replacement for the real magnets.