I had a visit to the workshop this week from an old friend who I haven’t seen for over ten years, I used to work with Alan on various jobs, he brought me two window sashes from a job he is presently working on
They are old style sash windows that slide horizontally which were quite rotten and he wondered if they could be repaired as opposed to being replaced with new ones, he removed them from the house and boarded up the openings whilst they were in the workshop
The two sashes were in a bad way with the bottom rail completely shot and the stiles had rot progressing into them, the sash bars in the lower section were also rotten.
I received them without the glass which he had removed and thought the best way forward would be to clean them down first and assess the extent of the rot to determine if this was even possible – once I had done this I decided that although they were borderline it was still feasible to do and would certainly be a cheaper alternative for his client than having replacements made although I knew I had my work cut out to get them back to a satisfactory state.
I cut all the rotten wood away from the frames to leave what was still sound and then machined some new Accoya timber in the workshop to the sizes required and cut a piece from the frame that I removed to give me a slice of each section so I could determine the profiles needed to machine into the new timbers, marked everything out then chose the best cutters I had to give me the profiles and went for it
The next process was to cut everything to length and cut all the joints required to get everything back together and then went on to gluing everything up and clamped them into position
Once the glue was dry I sanded the repairs which involved a lot of hand sanding and then fitted the new glazing bars – I used the router to cut a small channel in the window bars and glued the new bars into place
I coated all the repairs with Dulux Weathershield primer and undercoat and then it was ready to return them to the painter for final fitting, glass replacement and finishing.
I believe the efforts involved in getting these two sashes repaired were a sensible approach and with Accoya having a 50 year guarantee feel that it was worth while doing.
