Assembly Manual
Read this all the way through before you start. The whole job takes about twenty minutes and needs one tool. Nothing here is difficult, but two of the steps are difficult to undo — those are marked.
18" × 14" Aluminum · 1/4" Acrylic Spacer · You supply one flat-head screwdriver
You will need a flat-head screwdriver. It is not included in the parts bag — have one to hand before you start.
Put the gloves on now. Fingerprints on the inner face of the glazing or on the mat surfaces cannot be cleaned once the frame is closed. Everything from here forward is handled with gloves on.
Confirm all five items are present before you begin. If anything is missing, stop and contact us.
Before removing anything, look over the frame: rails straight and square at the corners, glazing free of cracks and chips, no dents or deep scratches in the finish.
Turn the frame face down on a clean, flat, padded surface.
The stack arrives in the correct order, with the cel space empty. You are only separating the top layers, placing your cel, and putting them back. Front to back, the build is:
Your inner mats come in three colors — white, black, and the accent you selected. Only the topmost inner mat is visible once assembled, so arrange them in whichever order gives you the look you want. The archival function is identical regardless of which one you put on top.
Align your cel to the inner mat beneath it. Take your time here — this is the position the cel keeps for the life of the frame, and every later step is designed to avoid disturbing it.
Adhere the Lineco mounting strips to that same inner mat, on each side and along the bottom. The top edge is left free so the cel can expand and contract without stress.
Working upward from the cel, replace in this order:
Peel the protective masking film from both faces of the Optium acrylic, then set the glazing on top of the acrylic spacer ring.
Stand the frame up on the table with the open edge at the side, not at the top. This is the orientation that keeps your cel upright while it goes in — loading from above would ask you to lay the stack flat and then tip it. Slide the glazing and mat stack in horizontally as one unit — never the glazing on its own followed by the mats, which risks the layers scraping against each other on the way in.
You can lift the adjacent rail slightly to open the channel and ease the stack in, then let it settle back before refitting the rail. Building the stack first and sliding it in as a unit is far easier than assembling layer by layer inside the frame, and it is the only order that keeps your cel alignment intact.
With the stack seated in the frame rabbet, lower the frame slowly from upright to face down.
Refit the side rail so both corner brackets seat in the channel, then tighten all four screws. Snug is enough — the stack is designed to be suspended, not compressed. Check that all four corners meet tight and square before going further.
Fit eight spring clips in the back channel — the four you removed plus the four from the parts bag, two per side. Their job is to hold the stack forward against the rabbet so nothing shifts front to back.
The wall cleat is the recommended method. It carries the load across three fixings rather than one, holds the frame flat to the wall instead of leaning off a wire, and lets you slide the frame sideways to centre it without disturbing anything you drilled.
Hanging wire is included as an alternative. The hanger hardware is in the parts bag rather than pre-fitted, so it adds nothing to the frame unless you choose to use it. Fit it only after the frame is assembled and closed.
Use a metal-frame wall cleat sized for the frame's back channel. Mark a level line at the height you want the top rail — level matters more than exact height, because a cleat that is off level shows immediately and cannot be corrected by nudging the frame. Fix the cleat with the three screws and anchors supplied, each into a stud or a rated anchor. The slotted holes allow small level corrections without redrilling.
Hold the frame upright with the top rail slightly above the installed cleat. Tilt the bottom rail out from the wall a little, and slide the frame down the wall until the cleat catches inside the channel on the back of the top rail.
Before you hang the frame, stick a bumper on the back at each bottom corner. They hold the frame square against the wall and stop the rail scuffing the paint. This is the only moment you can reach the back easily, so do it now rather than after.
Let the frame settle flat against the wall. With the frame hung, you can slide it left or right to centre it. To take it down, pull the bottom edge away from the wall slightly, then lift the frame straight up a couple of inches.
Only once the frame is closed and clipped. Seat a hanger in the channel of each vertical rail, roughly a quarter of the way down from the top. Each one lies flat in the channel and points inward toward the centre of the frame, so the two face each other across the back — they do not stand upright, and they do not sit on the boards. If a hanger slides too freely in the channel, remove it, bend its wings down slightly, and refit.
Do not fit these before assembly. Hardware standing in the back channel, and especially wire strung across it, will foul the stack going in.
Use wire rated above the frame's weight and at least 6" wider than the frame. Pass it through the hole in each hanger, then wrap each end back around itself at least five turns. Wrap or trim the excess so no sharp end stands proud of the back.
Pull the wire taut upward and note where the peak sits — it should stay well below the top rail so the fixing never shows. Mark the wall accordingly and drive one screw or hook into a stud or rated anchor. Hang the frame keeping it upright, then level across the top rail.
Check the corners, then check them again later. With the frame on the wall, look at all four corner joints. You are looking for a gap opening at a mitre, or any bend or bow along a rail. Repeat the check any time the frame is moved or rehung.
The frame is joined by L brackets at the corners, and those joints carry the load. We load tested the top brackets to 20 lb with no separation observed. The frame itself is about 5 lb, so that is a 4× margin on what the joints actually carry in service.
That validates the design, not your particular frame. A screw that never fully seated, a flaw in a part, or a knock in transit can still cause a problem no test programme would catch — and a visible gap or a bowed rail is the signal that something is wrong before it becomes a failure. Thirty seconds of looking is cheap insurance.
Where to hang it. Out of direct sunlight, away from heating and cooling vents, and off exterior walls where they run cold. The frame is designed to equilibrate with the room, so the room is what determines how it performs — a stable interior wall is worth more than any hardware choice on this page.
Keep this document with your Art-Sorb test report — you will need it at the service interval.
Questions, missing parts, or assembly help: celnexus@qualityexchanges.com