Saturday, April 17, 2010

Hey Hey Hey, Yogi, we got windows!

Yes we do, Boo Boo. White oak, true individual lites and as a bonus the glass is single pane wavy glass.
And there is more, Boo Boo. The porch gables are now covered and a trim board has been added to the roof edge.
When is the party, Yogi? Later, Boo Boo, later.


Some definitions:

A TDL is a True Divided Lite window, referring to the individual glass panes that are separated by real wood mullions. A classic window design.

Old window panes look wavy, distorted, and handmade - even after 1900. Understand their manufacture, and you'll know why.

Ever peer through an old window and see ... the glass? The distortions in antique glass are part of the charm of old windows and a historic feature well worth retaining. Though some may tell you that ripples and dimples are a sign of age - as if glass sags like flesh after a century - the truth is less fantastic, though almost as amazing.

It's all a result of how glass was made. Once you grasp the two basic methods used to make window glass until the 1910s, you can tell a lot about the age of your windows and how to care for them.

Crown Glass

For centuries, the best quality window glass was crown glass. To make panes with this method, a glass blower gathered a clump of molten glass on the end of a hollow pipe and blew it into a bubble much like a bottle. As a helper attached a pontil rod to the other side of the bubble, the glassworker broke off the blowpipe creating a hole. Then, by heating the glass and coaxing it with a wood paddle, he quickly enlarged this hole into a rough plate.

Working in front of a furnace to keep the glass hot and fluid, the worker then spun the rod with his hands, often on a supporting bench, so that centrifugal force stretched the glass out into a thin disc - a process nearly identical to a baker spinning fresh pizza dough for a pie. When the blower severed the rod, he had a disc of thin glass, up to 4 feet in diameter.

After annealing this table in another oven to equalize stresses, the glass was carefully cut into panes according to grade and size. The central "bull's-eye" - the thickest and most malformed part where the rods touched - was usually unusable and returned to the furnace.

In colonial America , however, whole or half tables of crown glass were regularly used uncut, often in gable windows. (Thomas Jefferson ordered several for the oculus and porthole windows at Monticello .) When thrifty Yankees divided up the tables, they put even the bull's-eyes to use in door or barn transoms where light meant more than a view

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