Bread and Butter

It's been a year of heavy oak work, some lighter oak work and some oak carving. Now is time for some bread and butter work; a run of sash window repair. Shhhh, don't tell anyone I can fix sash windows!

This poor old thing has seen some action; opening out from above a butterwalk, looking down Totnes Fore St. past the market square.

It's the top sash, with the bottom/meeting rail to the right. The meeting rail, unsurprisingly being only 1" thick, is rotten. It's been repaired before and definitely needs replacing. The pegs that held it to the stiles, however, are as good as they were 150+ years ago, as are the stiles.

You can see, top left (or rather you can't), the moulding obscured by fifteen layers of paint. Before I took it out of the frame, I thought it was an ovolo moulding. Several of the glazing bars were beyond saving, but that fortunately means that I can cut through one to see the original profile. Cavetto and bead!

A handsome moulding. A few rebates cut and then a hollow and round moulding plane. Fun, fun, fun. I could only save two glazing bars. It's testament to the original joiners, but even without glazing bars and bottom rail, this frame was solid.

In with the new parts, pegged, glued and tenons wedged. Re-glazed with putty.

It's not all meat and two veg. Plenty of bread and butter between times. And there's certainly many sliding sash windows round these parts, to be restored.....