First Sash Window Complete

Well, almost complete, still need to finish painting it, screw in the sash locks, lifts and pulleys, cut the glass and then glaze them. Even though this is my third window (first two were test windows) it still took a while, in part because I made a few jigs along the way (to help me replicate cuts in future windows) and I also made pretty detailed measurements so I can make accurate reproducible cuts.

I can’t stress enough how useful this digital height gauge was for recording and setting router bit height and distance from fence, with this I could easily dial in measurements to 0.1mm which is pretty damn good.

We are painting all our windows with linseed oil paint from Sage Restoration, it’s more expensive than regular paint but has the following advantages,

• It’s environmentally friendly
• It allows the wood to breath. Currently modern paints aim to seal the wood against the elements, but if water gets behind it, it can’t easily escape which can cause decay.
• You don’t need to re-paint it, you can just paint on pure linseed oil every 5 years or so to nourish the wood

If you want to know more about linseed oil paint, this is an informative resource.

I’ve also heard that the reason that the old and dangerous lead paint was so durable was that it was basically a linseed oil paint with the lead added as a pigment and/or to reduce drying time. The history of lead paint can be found here on Wikipedia.

For the first primer coat we mixed 50% linseed paint, 35% linseed oil and 15% pure pine turpentine. Some resource say you don’t need to thin the primer coat but it seems to make sense to me that a thinned coat will penetrate deeper into the wood. This isn’t the final colour as we’re still deciding that, though I think we’ll go with shades of green/blue, a lighter one for the sashes and a darker one for the frames or maybe the other way around, we can’t decide.

As this goes to print I’m already working on the second window.

If anyone is wondering how our porch rebuild is going, it’s going slowly, mainly due to Andre not being able to fine suitable help, so if anyone knows someone who wants to learn about timber framing, reach out and you could learn from an expert and get paid for it!