Got one more small window (both sashes) complete and back in place. This was a smaller pantry window, painted shut for many years before we moved in. Really great to have this window working. The sash weight access panels broke open cleanly, never opened before. I think we are getting the hang of opening these panels.
Two more windows (4 sashes) are ready to go back in the frames tomorrow. This includes the biggest window in the house, a larger window that is the middle of a bay window. We have never had this window open since we moved in 4 years ago, it will be great to get a breeze through this window, with both the top and bottom sashes working.
When these are in we have a total of 6 windows out of 12 on the first floor done. I hope to get the other 6 done this year before it gets too cold to work on them.
Window repair - which surfaces do not get painted? (plus top sash question)
Re: Window repair - which surfaces do not get painted? (plus top sash question)
great progress! it's a lot of work but so very rewarding once the work is done...
good for you!
....jade
good for you!
....jade
Re: Window repair - which surfaces do not get painted? (plus top sash question)
Two more windows back in yesterday, so now 8 out of 12 on the first floor done.
Window #9 is out, both sashes stripped. I oiled the sashes yesterday, over the weekend I will work on the shellac side (the inside of the sashes), so Monday we can start on the paint side. The case/frame is mostly stripped.
I think we are on track to finish the first floor before it gets too cold. Nights are getting down to the 50’s here, pretty soon it will be too cold to paint.
Things are moving a little faster now after 8 windows done, we have learned a few lessons about what works for us and what doesn’t. The results are still far from perfect, but getting better.
I happened to run across this old document from the 50’s from Delta tools. The window sash construction details here match exactly the sashes we have.
http://vintagemachinery.org/pubs/detail.aspx?id=4559
Window #9 is out, both sashes stripped. I oiled the sashes yesterday, over the weekend I will work on the shellac side (the inside of the sashes), so Monday we can start on the paint side. The case/frame is mostly stripped.
I think we are on track to finish the first floor before it gets too cold. Nights are getting down to the 50’s here, pretty soon it will be too cold to paint.
Things are moving a little faster now after 8 windows done, we have learned a few lessons about what works for us and what doesn’t. The results are still far from perfect, but getting better.
I happened to run across this old document from the 50’s from Delta tools. The window sash construction details here match exactly the sashes we have.
http://vintagemachinery.org/pubs/detail.aspx?id=4559
Re: Window repair - which surfaces do not get painted? (plus top sash question)
great to hear about your progress! are you weather stripping and/or do you have storm windows?
thanks for the link--reminds me of my dad in his work apron...
....jade
thanks for the link--reminds me of my dad in his work apron...
....jade
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Gothichome
- Moderator
- Posts: 4185
- Joined: Sun Aug 16, 2015 8:34 pm
- Location: Chatham Ont
Re: Window repair - which surfaces do not get painted? (plus top sash question)
Ken, thanks for posting the link, it is interesting and informative all at the same time. Notice the weight of those machines, good solid tools meant to last lifetimes. I always get a chuckle at these old adds the fellow operating the equipment usually have a waist coat and tie on. Now any tradesman (even then)knew better than to wear a tie while operating machinery. Safety, humph, that’s for babies!
Re: Window repair - which surfaces do not get painted? (plus top sash question)
heartwood wrote:great to hear about your progress! are you weather stripping and/or do you have storm windows?
thanks for the link--reminds me of my dad in his work apron...
....jade
No weather stripping or storm windows. Unfortunately I’m assuming we will have more drafts this year with more sashes freed up instead of painted shut.
Re: Window repair - which surfaces do not get painted? (plus top sash question)
Gothichome wrote:Ken, thanks for posting the link, it is interesting and informative all at the same time. Notice the weight of those machines, good solid tools meant to last lifetimes. I always get a chuckle at these old adds the fellow operating the equipment usually have a waist coat and tie on. Now any tradesman (even then)knew better than to wear a tie while operating machinery. Safety, humph, that’s for babies!
I spent the last year or so researching old school window sash construction, especially doing all of the work with hand tools. I hurt my back bad for the first time last year (twice) so I had a lot of time sitting still and reading. I found a bunch of used tools, expanded my sharpening gear etc., and I spent a lot of time last winter refurbishing and cleaning up some old tools. I want to build some sashes to put in the barn and also to build some Queen Anne style colored glass windows for the house.
I finally reached the point of realizing my back will not survive the hard work of thicknessing, flattening, squaring, molding, etc., all of the wood I would need. Also doing this work in soft pine is one thing but Fir or Mahogany is too much.
I wanted a workshop without machines and dust and noise, but I have now started down the path with some small shop machines. I have a small band saw and a small shaper now. This week a small jointer and a small planer will arrive.
For old school shaper instruction (or as the British call it a “moulder”), complete with a shop apron, I found this video very helpful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n6yTHMBX54
I like how safety conscious he is, and I found it really interesting how he has a jig for everything to not only make things safer but also repeatable and consistent.
Re: Window repair - which surfaces do not get painted? (plus top sash question)
KenN wrote:heartwood wrote:great to hear about your progress! are you weather stripping and/or do you have storm windows?
thanks for the link--reminds me of my dad in his work apron...
....jade
No weather stripping or storm windows. Unfortunately I’m assuming we will have more drafts this year with more sashes freed up instead of painted shut.
Ken, have you heard of interior storm panels? I use them every year in my 1860 Cape, original windows (which are a little loose too). These things work GREAT. My windows now rival new replacement windows! NO drafts whatsoever. Additional benefit: they keep interior moisture from condensing on the inside of your sashes (mostly, except for where they may bleed a little air).
I built Leeke's original models, but there are several ways to do this. Painted the wooden frames I made up to match the trim, so these things are very unobtrusive.
https://blog.jonudell.net/2014/09/28/a-cost-effective-way-to-winterize-windows/
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phil
- Has many leather bound books
- Posts: 4616
- Joined: Tue Aug 18, 2015 6:11 pm
- Location: Near Vancouver BC
Re: Window repair - which surfaces do not get painted? (plus top sash question)
ive repaired most of that equipment and there is still a lot of it floating around. Delta made good stuff and some of the older English makers like robinson were even better.
SNC in italy makes some good stuff, most of what's available new is offshore stuff which is very poor quality by comparison. the little lunchbox planers are cheap , you can get a new one for around $400 , they are deafeningly loud but they work ok for home use.
you might look at a tablesaw and a molding head rather than a shaper, unless you want to do a lot of windows. a tablesaw with a molding head or a router can cut similar profiles. The tablesaw and jointer are the most necessary and useful machines.
most of that old delta stuff is still around if you watch equipment auctions and such , usually it can be brought into good condition just watch for broken castings and things like that.
If it comes with a familiar dewalt , porter cable snap on , they all make offshore junk and you get what you pay for.
So dont put any confidence int to the name , these manufacturers don't follow the quality standards that they built their names upon.
once change is that most of the modern stuff runs carbide blades rather than just high speed steel many of the new planers have removable inserts but HSS is fine usually.
I think the best way to set yourself up is to look on the used market, youll find lots that is perfectly fine despite being old and of better quality than the new stuff. Try not to buy 3 phase but even that you can work around by changing the motor or going to a rotaphase or a phase invertor, then you can run 3 phase stuff at home if you want to.
one of the main differences I see is just the quality of the steel, im finding parts made of plastic and bolts made of crappy metal so they strip. they are also really good at making parts that look like metal so if you buy anything new actually touch the parts to see if they are chromed plastic. older machiens will have marks on the heads of the bolts indicartiong the grade of bolt, this new made in china crap doesnt' even have markings usually and the bolts strip really easily.
good quality makers cast the castings and then buried them, allowed them to normalize then they did the finish machining the parts were generally very sturdy and stable. these new machines warp as they normalize right from the factory. I get calls where people say look this jointer table is warped.. I'm like... what do you want me to do about it? then I ask them to put something straight on the surface of the table and show them how I can deflect it out of parallel with just a bit of hand pressure. the old machines had really good quality switches and parts. these new machiens have cheapo buttons and relays and other parts. when I needto fix them I can often find a substitute but Im seeing a lot of those sorts of failures because they use cheapo dollar store quality components. it does become an issue when its a special motor or some proprietary part then it takes a long time to get the parts because the vendors are buying the parts from china not ony the machiens and they dont stock the parts int he US so much.. so if I just need one switch and it is a specialized one it can put the machine down for an unnecessarily long time while the part crawls out of china waiting to be accumulated with some other order to save shipping cost..
a lot of the new stuff is metric , a lot of this old US stuff is imperial, I dont have much preference and I work with both about as much as each other. but If I want to ruin down to the hardware store and buy a 100mm long 8 mm bolt I find myself ordering it in.. if it's 5/16 3 inch bolt, no problem its there on the shelf. The selection of standard sizes is still more abundant even though we switched to metric in about 1970 here in Canada nuts and bolts aren't so much of an issue but sometimes the little C clip or a roll pin can throw you a bit if you need a metric one, or the tiny little metric screw that you dropped in the dust.
the difference in the quality of the casting isn't something people notice but the grain of the metal is different. that old US and European steel was really good but they learned how to make everything more cheaply.
bearings are seldom an issue you can almost always get bearings. a lot of the new made in china stuff comes with made in china bearings. they aren't the same quality and they do fail because they are made so cheaply. put one alongside the other and the difference youll see is one is made by SKF or FAG or some familiar name but the chinese one will say made in china and it wont last nearly as long before it fails.
rust isn't too much of an issue so long as the machines just got rusted tops and they were not out sitting in the rain.
CNC has come a long way some are buying little CNC router tables and things. You can low priced stuff. Its neat what you can do but a lot of that stuff is super loud.
doing everything by hand without machinery is a neat hobby. I respect it and I can see why you'd want to , but its hard if it takes a long time and you just know there is a much easier way. why spend 20 minutes hand planing a board if you can send it over a joiner and do the same in seconds. There is always work that is best done by hand with simple tools though. robotics are good for repeat work but most home owners and hobbyists want a lot of versatility. As those commercial shops make the switch to CNC things like the old shapers get replaced by modern CNC stuff in cabinet shops so it is actually pretty surprising what you can find without going into the thousands for any of it. radial arm saws fell out of fashion but they are very versatile and there are some good ones for almost free or free. everyone wants chop saws or sliding miter saws. I've never found need for one myself because my RAS will do all that and so much more.
you can get power feeders if you wan to keep your hands clear. they can be good if you are doing really repetitive stuff like feeding wood through a router or molding cutter. otherwise there is often a jig you can make up to do things more safely or with more comfort and precision. often the special jigs are of one time use , some stuff like featherboards push sticks and a tabesaw sled are really nice to have and you can use them for different things.
my dad was a joiner then a carpenter he made a lot of amazing stuff , he know his tools , what fascinates me is what he could do with so little. He never went out and bought all the different machines he could have and he always found ways to do it anyway. He'd use hand tools if that suited him , power tools if it was the easiest way. hed think of nothing to use a brace and bit to drill a hole because he was used to that. now you never see one being used ..
nowadays if you go into a modern cabinet shop you wont see to many had planes. sure they know what they are and how to use them but in production they really don't not unless its something custom or to fix some little screw up. in a little home shop you might be faced with trying to smooth out a piece of plywood. sure you can put it on the joiner until it's the end of a 4x8 sheet and the ceiling is too low or something like that.. then that old hand plane becomes important again.
SNC in italy makes some good stuff, most of what's available new is offshore stuff which is very poor quality by comparison. the little lunchbox planers are cheap , you can get a new one for around $400 , they are deafeningly loud but they work ok for home use.
you might look at a tablesaw and a molding head rather than a shaper, unless you want to do a lot of windows. a tablesaw with a molding head or a router can cut similar profiles. The tablesaw and jointer are the most necessary and useful machines.
most of that old delta stuff is still around if you watch equipment auctions and such , usually it can be brought into good condition just watch for broken castings and things like that.
If it comes with a familiar dewalt , porter cable snap on , they all make offshore junk and you get what you pay for.
So dont put any confidence int to the name , these manufacturers don't follow the quality standards that they built their names upon.
once change is that most of the modern stuff runs carbide blades rather than just high speed steel many of the new planers have removable inserts but HSS is fine usually.
I think the best way to set yourself up is to look on the used market, youll find lots that is perfectly fine despite being old and of better quality than the new stuff. Try not to buy 3 phase but even that you can work around by changing the motor or going to a rotaphase or a phase invertor, then you can run 3 phase stuff at home if you want to.
one of the main differences I see is just the quality of the steel, im finding parts made of plastic and bolts made of crappy metal so they strip. they are also really good at making parts that look like metal so if you buy anything new actually touch the parts to see if they are chromed plastic. older machiens will have marks on the heads of the bolts indicartiong the grade of bolt, this new made in china crap doesnt' even have markings usually and the bolts strip really easily.
good quality makers cast the castings and then buried them, allowed them to normalize then they did the finish machining the parts were generally very sturdy and stable. these new machines warp as they normalize right from the factory. I get calls where people say look this jointer table is warped.. I'm like... what do you want me to do about it? then I ask them to put something straight on the surface of the table and show them how I can deflect it out of parallel with just a bit of hand pressure. the old machines had really good quality switches and parts. these new machiens have cheapo buttons and relays and other parts. when I needto fix them I can often find a substitute but Im seeing a lot of those sorts of failures because they use cheapo dollar store quality components. it does become an issue when its a special motor or some proprietary part then it takes a long time to get the parts because the vendors are buying the parts from china not ony the machiens and they dont stock the parts int he US so much.. so if I just need one switch and it is a specialized one it can put the machine down for an unnecessarily long time while the part crawls out of china waiting to be accumulated with some other order to save shipping cost..
a lot of the new stuff is metric , a lot of this old US stuff is imperial, I dont have much preference and I work with both about as much as each other. but If I want to ruin down to the hardware store and buy a 100mm long 8 mm bolt I find myself ordering it in.. if it's 5/16 3 inch bolt, no problem its there on the shelf. The selection of standard sizes is still more abundant even though we switched to metric in about 1970 here in Canada nuts and bolts aren't so much of an issue but sometimes the little C clip or a roll pin can throw you a bit if you need a metric one, or the tiny little metric screw that you dropped in the dust.
the difference in the quality of the casting isn't something people notice but the grain of the metal is different. that old US and European steel was really good but they learned how to make everything more cheaply.
bearings are seldom an issue you can almost always get bearings. a lot of the new made in china stuff comes with made in china bearings. they aren't the same quality and they do fail because they are made so cheaply. put one alongside the other and the difference youll see is one is made by SKF or FAG or some familiar name but the chinese one will say made in china and it wont last nearly as long before it fails.
rust isn't too much of an issue so long as the machines just got rusted tops and they were not out sitting in the rain.
CNC has come a long way some are buying little CNC router tables and things. You can low priced stuff. Its neat what you can do but a lot of that stuff is super loud.
doing everything by hand without machinery is a neat hobby. I respect it and I can see why you'd want to , but its hard if it takes a long time and you just know there is a much easier way. why spend 20 minutes hand planing a board if you can send it over a joiner and do the same in seconds. There is always work that is best done by hand with simple tools though. robotics are good for repeat work but most home owners and hobbyists want a lot of versatility. As those commercial shops make the switch to CNC things like the old shapers get replaced by modern CNC stuff in cabinet shops so it is actually pretty surprising what you can find without going into the thousands for any of it. radial arm saws fell out of fashion but they are very versatile and there are some good ones for almost free or free. everyone wants chop saws or sliding miter saws. I've never found need for one myself because my RAS will do all that and so much more.
you can get power feeders if you wan to keep your hands clear. they can be good if you are doing really repetitive stuff like feeding wood through a router or molding cutter. otherwise there is often a jig you can make up to do things more safely or with more comfort and precision. often the special jigs are of one time use , some stuff like featherboards push sticks and a tabesaw sled are really nice to have and you can use them for different things.
my dad was a joiner then a carpenter he made a lot of amazing stuff , he know his tools , what fascinates me is what he could do with so little. He never went out and bought all the different machines he could have and he always found ways to do it anyway. He'd use hand tools if that suited him , power tools if it was the easiest way. hed think of nothing to use a brace and bit to drill a hole because he was used to that. now you never see one being used ..
nowadays if you go into a modern cabinet shop you wont see to many had planes. sure they know what they are and how to use them but in production they really don't not unless its something custom or to fix some little screw up. in a little home shop you might be faced with trying to smooth out a piece of plywood. sure you can put it on the joiner until it's the end of a 4x8 sheet and the ceiling is too low or something like that.. then that old hand plane becomes important again.
Re: Window repair - which surfaces do not get painted? (plus top sash question)
Thanks for the info Phil. I now have a small shaper, a bench top jointer, and a bench top planer. All new but low end machines. I don’t plan on working any material bigger than a window sash.
The jointer I had to square up and adjust, it was pretty far out of square. I think I got lucky and just a few adjustments got me square. The planner needed just a little adjustment.
It is interesting in how the hand and machine methods of construction differ, in terms of maintaining a reference to squareness etc. When I was reading and learning about the hand tool construction method, it took me a while to really appreciate how they declare a single reference surface, and work everything off of that. Marking all of the material at the same time for cuts also is part of this.
The machine method seems to rely instead on creating perfect square material first, and then treating all sides as available references, and relying more on consistent measurement and machine setup. A properly square jointer I’ve learned is the foundation for this approach, so I had to get that square.
I have been practicing with scrap, and I feel I can produce nice square pieces now, with consistent thicknesses.
I can’t start on making any sashes yet though. I searched for a long time for bits that would create the sash profile I needed, so I finally drew out what I was looking for and ordered some custom bits that I am waiting for. I wasted money on a few bits that I thought would work but in the end the best I could do with them was produce something that would work but was very ugly.
I hope the bits come soon, my workspace is not heated and the cold is coming.
The jointer I had to square up and adjust, it was pretty far out of square. I think I got lucky and just a few adjustments got me square. The planner needed just a little adjustment.
It is interesting in how the hand and machine methods of construction differ, in terms of maintaining a reference to squareness etc. When I was reading and learning about the hand tool construction method, it took me a while to really appreciate how they declare a single reference surface, and work everything off of that. Marking all of the material at the same time for cuts also is part of this.
The machine method seems to rely instead on creating perfect square material first, and then treating all sides as available references, and relying more on consistent measurement and machine setup. A properly square jointer I’ve learned is the foundation for this approach, so I had to get that square.
I have been practicing with scrap, and I feel I can produce nice square pieces now, with consistent thicknesses.
I can’t start on making any sashes yet though. I searched for a long time for bits that would create the sash profile I needed, so I finally drew out what I was looking for and ordered some custom bits that I am waiting for. I wasted money on a few bits that I thought would work but in the end the best I could do with them was produce something that would work but was very ugly.
I hope the bits come soon, my workspace is not heated and the cold is coming.