The Historic District

Got my steam box up and running for the first of many sessions. Hooked it up to a Jiffy J-4000 steamer. Steamed two sashes for 35 minutes. It was amazingly easy to remove the old putty without breaking the wavy glass panes. One of them only had one point for the entire pane. The other one had about 4 for each side. No problem to remove them either.
Wow, I thought it would be much more difficult.
I'd really rather spend my time fossil hunting but this restoration needs to be done ASAP, so I'll just have to be happy with any thing that makes this job easier.

Good to hear it went smoothly. That's a large piece of wavy glass, too. They're not getting any easier to find.

The steam box is great! We built ours before I did all my windows. By sash 50, it was probably time for a new one--or for some shoring up. Yours looks more substantial than ours. We "lived and learned," as they say.

One thing I can say for sure: there's definitely a breakage rate, the more you do. I would say about 20% of my glass cracked. I'm assuming it has something to do with the heat, pressure, and expansion, but I'm no expert. Luckily, I do enough architectural salvage to replace the broken panes. In fact, I'm in the process of having wood storm-sash windows made by Illingworth Millwork in Adams New York. I had enough glass for them to use to outfit every opening. It required about two houses worth of window glass between sizes and breakage, but I imagine the waviness is going to be awesome!

Cleaning all that glass is no easy task, either. I used a combo of garden hose, squeegee, 0000 steel wool, Windex, paper towels, and razor blades to remove YEARS of weather. Of course, that was after I--CAREFULLY--took 100 sash apart with a reciprocating saw. Some of the panes were pains and had a bit of acid rain haze--sometimes impossible to remove but it's all part of the charm, right?

Good luck with your project!