Glazing Ordered

I've been and ordered the sealed units today from a local company "Pro-Glass Glazing Services"
These will be with foam type warm edge spacer and hot melt sealed, one toughened one standard, with pilkington K.

Total price now with only 15% VAT - £114.12

The final straight

With all the wood working done all I've got to do know is:

1. One coat of raw linseed oil
2. Shellac on the glazing rebates
3. Order, and fit the glazing
4. Silicon on top of the seals?
5. Paint first coat
6. Paint second coat
7. Order and collect lead or steel
8. Take out the old window
9. Fit the new one, that should be fun.
10. Paint third coat
11. Plaster up
12. Architrave
13. Decorate.
14. Have a beer or two to celebrate
15. Start on the others

Now there's a plan........

Last bits for the frame

All that remains is to cut the parting beads and staff beads.

I cut out a radius on the bottom of parting beads to ensure water wont lodge behind them.

The staff beads are mitered. As my compound miter saw, compounds and miters as it likes I set the cross slide on the router at 45 and trimmed the ends to get them bang on.

Glueing up the frame

As I'm using fast PU glue I had to think this through and make sure everything was ready to hand. Even with preparation in place I wasn't confident about doing it all at once.

So I glued up the boxes first and using grease proof paper again I screwed the cill and top rail on to make sure it was all square.

When this had hardened up I took the cill back off removed the grease proof glued it and re-screwed it. The same with the top rail. And later I did the top inner and outer. It all worked well with only a little fettling with the plane to flatten a couple of the joints.

Clamp / Glazing Beads

But first - don't forget the parting bead cut out on the meeting rail. Top Sash and bottom sash clamping bead/meeting rail. Should look like this.

After carefully marking out avoiding the vent holes, I drilled and counter sunk the clamp/beads

I came to the conclusion that gluing the clamping/glazing beads together would be a good idea. It'll be easier to paint, it shouldn't show up a join after painting, the seals will be easier to fit. so I glued and assembled them on to sashes with some grease proof paper in between to stop them sticking.

After fettling with the smoothing plane and some light sanding the sashes are ready for painting.

Seals experiments

This is an area I pondered quite a bit. Originally I was going to use sticky both sides glazing tape. having bought some I decided it didn't have enough give in it to accommodate any movement and would be pig to fit. Hence to order for EPDM (foam rubbery) seals, after I'd tested some with linseed oil on them. Compression of the EPDM was the next thing I had to figure out.

As can be seen on the mock up the idea is the inside face of the sash is screwed on to the main sash, holding the glass in place and compressing the seals. The downside to this is the counter sunk screw holes will need filling, but its a compromise I decided to make.

I made up a mock 24mm glazing unit a tested the 3mm EPDM seals I had bought. you can also see the 5mm bridge spacer I'll be using to keep an air space around the unit.

I wasn't happy with amount of compression on the seals, only squashed from 3mm to 2mm. The ridges on seals were only just compressed. So another order this time for 4mm.

This worked out much better, all the ridges are almost completely squashed and the glass is held firmly. I think this should hold the rain out for a good while.

I then did a little experiment to see how muck clamping pressure is needed to compress the seals this much, so I could be happy with the screw spacing.

This showed me that a 200mm length of 4mm seal needs 15kg applied to compress it to 2mm.
I should think this won't be a problem to achieve with 1 1/2 no. 6 screws at 150mm spacing. The clamping wood is 15mm so I shouldn't think it will distort.

Cill rebate for backing cover

This would have been easier before assembly as well. A rebate in the end of the cill to take the backing cover of the weight box.


As it was it didn't take long with a chisel, I could have use the router, but at this point hitting something with a mallet felt good.

BIG Mistake

I went ahead and glued the frame up!

Can you spot the mistake?

I hadn't cut the weight pocket out... doh!

The pockets need an arrow shape at the top and and a stepped cut at the bottom. Not easy if I hadn't glued up the frame, but I should have been able to do it with a tenon saw and the long cut down the parting bead rebate with a jigsaw.

The first one I tried with a dremel, hence the burning. The second I used the dremel to cut a Stanley knife blade in to a makeshift saw blade which was a little easier. After the cuts are made a tap with the mallet splits the between the stepped cuts. Giving a pocket cover that only needs one screw to hold it in place.

Update on cutting pockets here Sash Weight pocket cutting

Pulleys and Fitch Fastner

The pulleys are good quality and feel really nice with the bearings in them. Fitting is easy.

Using the Morticer

Then router to let in the face plates, corners with a chisel.

The Fitch Fasteners, I worked out eventually are supposed to fit on the top sash, to restrict both sash moving past a certain point. I however wanted only the bottom sash restricting and thought they would be easy to fit on the pulley stiles. The problem was, when closed the back end would interfere with the weights.

After some head scratching I drove the hinge pin out and took about 4mm off the back of the catch. At the same time I tidied up the rather poor fettling and re-polished them.

I'm sure they will do the job now.

Nasty little knot though.

Bottom Sash Bottom Rebate

The bootom of the bottom sash is rebated 5mm for two reasons.

1. To create a drip stop.


2. to create a cavity behind where air pressure will drop so water isn, blown up to the upstand on the rebate. (thats the theory anyway)

Just a quick zip on the router table.

Extra relief for the pulley

This is something else I needed to measure the pully for. The cord groove in the sashes fits the cord nicely but not the pulley it's self.

The groove at the top of each sash needs to be bit deeper, I went for 10mm, and long enough so the sash will slide all the way up.

Hardware delivered, Paint delivered

The hardware order arrived, an excellent fast service from Reddiseals. Now I've got the pulleys etc. I can do the required cutting to fit them on the stiles.
I've also ordered and had delivered the linseed oil paint fro Holkam. I'm going to give it a go, after all the first window is suposed to test.
I've been busy over the weekend finishing off the wood working, all the piece are the front room ready to start painting.
I'll try and arrange the posts above to give a logical and efficent order although this wasn't the order I worked in, and I ended up wasting many hours.

Linseed Oil Paint

More research, I've emailed "Holkhan" and had a good reply back.

The linseed oil may react with the edge sealing of sealed units, so they recommend conventional paint or shellac in the rebate, this is also so sticky backed seals will stick. They are still looking into the effects on EPDM foam seals for me.

I've had my own little experiment going for the last week. Some Boiled Linseed Oil on some seal samples. There's no noticeable deterioration yet. So its looking good.

LEAD weighty choice

I've been doing some ringing around, emailing and web searches looking for a good price on lead weights.

I also checked to see what the maximum size of weight would fit in the boxes - result 45mm or 1 1/4 inch square will go in easily with plenty of clearance for fitting .

Each sash will need around 16kg, so each window 32kg and each individual weight 8kg. At 45mm square they will need to be approx 390mm long, leaving loads of room for up and down movement. Knowing how long they have to be also allowed me to work out how long the pockets in the pulley rail will be to get the weights in.

With the other windows I've estimated I'll need around 160kg in total and I used this figure to get some prices. The obvious, easy to find companies must be making a big margin or are still selling stocks bought when the lead prices peaked. I eventually found a fairly local smelting company, I can collect from, that has quoted £1.60 per kilogram.

At this price I don't think I'll be smelting my own. But its still a possibility If I come across some scrap lead cheap enough.

HOWEVER - As there is plenty of up and down room in the boxes, I've done another quick calculation for using steel bar. At 45mm square it will still fit! even though I'd do each weight in two parts, segmented, so I wouldn't need a really long pocket. Some more ringing around needed to price up this option.

Sealed Units

I've done some ringing around and found a very local company that manufactures the units for some of the local window companies. I asked for a number of options on the prices but all following are for 2 units, approx 1000 x 800mm as 4 - 16 - 4 (thats 4mm glass and 16mm space) with Pilkington K glass.

1. Toughened glass, standard spacers £121
2. Toughened glass, "warm edge spacers" £134
3. Standard glass, standard spacers £85
4. Standard Glass, "warm edge spacers" 98.24

The K glass and 16mm space should get me the required U value if I through Building Control regs.
I'll need toughened glass on the lower sash for some of windows, as the cills are low, again part of the regs.
The warm edge spacer sound like a good idea to me, as standard aluminium spacers cold bridge between the glass. At £6.50 difference for each unit I think I'll try it out.

I think I'll leave ordering these until I've started on the painting, there's no sense having big bits of glass laying around our house for longer than neccesary.

Hardware Order In

Back to it after a fantastic few days relaxing in a cozy cottage at Robin Hoods Bay.

I've ordered the required hardware for 7 windows from www.reddiseals.com the following should be arriving on Monday.

DESCRIPTION, QUANTITY,PRICE,COST
PUZ011PB Polished Brass Ball Pulley 28 £3.35 £93.80
CW511 Weatherpile in Self Adhesive Carrier 21 £1.20 £25.20
CW512 Weatherpile in Self Adhesive Carrier 7 £1.35 £9.45
FS819B Brass Fitch Fastener 14 £1.95 £27.30
FS828B Brass Sash Handle 14 £0.85 £11.90
FS826B Brass Sash Eye 7 £0.75 £5.25
FS834B Brass Pole Hook 1 £2.10 £2.10
FP851 Weekes Stop 3 £1.30 £3.90
REW0309 EPDM Tape 1 £24.00 £24.00
SF2002 Glazing Silicone 2 £2.25 £4.50 (although I dont think I'll need it in retrospect)
Subtotal: £207.40 Inc VAT and Shipping £254.28

So per window £36.33 (plus sash cord I've already got)

Also on the hardware front I had to elsewhere for the "Bridge Spacers" these are little plastic packers (5mm) that go around the unit and leave an air gap underneath. £1 for 20 + £6 postage.

You can see above that Ive ordered EPDM Tape. This is closed cell foam 3 x 9mm sticky backed one side. I'll see how it goes.