Sunday 17 May 2009

Building a casement window

First posting is about building a casement window. I live in a 180 year old mud house, and have done for a while. The windows need continual maintainance, sanding, painting, filling, cutting out of rotten wood, replacement with filler, until finally I had more plastic wood and wet-rot hardener than I did original window. I abhor PVC windows; where would all my cute, friendly woodworm live? So on looking into replacement bespoke wooden windows, I discovered how very, very expensive they are. Secondly I was inspired by Dave who used to live in the village, and every day, taking my kids to school, I would pass him slowly replacing all 10 of the windows on his house (and he did the back). Finally I plucked up courage to ask him the hows whys and wherefores, I then discovered that he was not a professional, but enthusiastic amateur and did it in his spare time. Armed with this knowledge and the passion I have for creating things, I set about finding out how to put a window together. For sash windows this is not too difficult, there seem to be sites and books showing you how to build one, blimmey, there are even kits. Casement was a lot harder (and it is in response to this I am blogging). Firstly I looked in books, DIY ones have exceedingly small bits on how to repair parts of casements, even books I ordered especially from my lovely local library; their titles suggesting all answers would be held within, proved of little use. For once in my life, answers were not contained within tomes. So then I examined the windows, and the parts that had fallen off, discovered the joints that they were held together by. Now books did come in handy at this point, naming the essential woodworking joint as the mortice and tenon. And here is a picture of said joint.




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