They Framed Me! Building a home theatre screen frame

By Max Christoffersen

April 2007

Aluminium and mdf is all that's needed to construct your own screen frame

The mdf pieces are used for corners

All you need is a screwdriver

DIY projects are just one of the many fun factors of home theatre. Reading through various A/V forums probably one of the most asked questions is; “How do I build a screen frame?”

There are few easier projects to do than build a new screen frame for home theatre projection and thankfully, you don’t need to be a qualified chippy to build it!

The one I built recently is solid and can grow larger should I decide to increase screen size later.

So what do you need? About 20 screws and a screwdriver. That’s it!

Some planning and sizing in advance will save headaches later, so figure out what size/aspect ratio you want and allow for edge masks to mop up overscan.

So back to my new project. A change in my viewing room meant it was time to build another screen frame at the 96”x54” size. I took a quick trip down to Mico-Wakefield and bought 2”x1” aluminium lengths and had them precut to my required screen sizing.

The Mico-Team cut my four frame bits that morning and I was back home that afternoon ready to go to phase two of the build using some pre-cut wood joiners. But wait-a-minute - why not wood for the whole thing? The simple answer is wood warps and given the additional strength, longevity and resistance to changing room temperatures, I went with aluminium! And it’s so easy to work with.

So far all I have is four bits of pre-cut aluminium ($160). What I also need are four pre-cut corner joiners (see picture 1) which slide into the inside of the aluminium tube that provide the shape and strength of the screen. These wood braces built by my local joiner out of spare MDF ($10) can be easily screwed into place providing a strong and secure brace. (You could also use triangle stock aluminium to beef it all up later if required).

So all that is left is to choose where to drill holes in the aluminium allowing for screws to go into the corner braces. All up I used 20 screws with two per corner and one on the vertical upright in each corner (see picture 3).

The screws could be counter sunk but don’t need to be and because they are screwed inside and behind the frame they are out of sight. You could if you wish screw on both inside and outside giving a more balanced grip.

The screen is now safe to hang, it won’t move out of shape and with the addition of two marine coach bolt-hooks it can be hung like a picture.

Last of all is the fixing of the screen material to the aluminium. There are a variety of ways to do this, with the easiest being Velcro. It’s expensive, but it is also the simplest and most effective. Another method is to use double sided tape used by carpet installers - it can be pretty permanent stuff so be sure you don’t want to change you screen material in a hurry.

This project takes longer to plan than build, but as with any project, attention to detail is important.

Oh yes, that thing about getting bigger… well if you make your wood joiners quite long (30 cm), they can slide out like a telescope giving you vertical and horizontal stretch to the next size up. It works, it’s simple and if you plan ahead, this may be the only screen frame you ever need.

There’s nothing quite as satisfying as saying you built it yourself - and with this frame the hard work is done by professionals and the easy part is the final assembly.

Now how do I make a DIY masking system…

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