Neal Clayton
05-15-2009, 1:38 AM
as i've mentioned in a few other threads, most of my woodworking revolves around the restoration of an old craftsman style house, and i have somewhat of a conundrum, which i think has a solution, if only i can find what i'm looking for...
for those not familiar, craftsman style moldings typically have very few, if any, coped or mitered corners. there's more of an emphasis on butt joints that transition from one style of molding to the next. for instance around doors and windows you have a casing that butts into the sill in the case of a window, and on the other end butts up to a crown type molding that lays on top of the casings.
on a door you have a cap on the bottom that the casing butts into, and the same crown type molding on the top that's also a simple butt joint.
the problem with this of course is seasonal movement. those butt joints tend to expand away from each other a bit without anything to hold them together. on many of my older pieces that are original they seemed to use some sort of epoxy along the butt joints to combat movement. this is of course overly tedious so i'm trying to avoid having to go this route. all of the molding is naturally finished with shellac and a varnish so caulking up badly fit joints as some do in new construction is out of the question.
unfortunately cutting butterfly inlays on a whole house full of molding is also too tedious to be feasible, what i'm looking for is a metal key that can be hammered in place quickly on the hidden backside of a joint.
i believe they're used on picture frames as well, picture frame makers call them miter keys. someone told me they saw mention of them on TOH and they were called bowties or some such.
problem is i can't find such a thing from searching around so don't know if anyone makes them anymore. does such hardware still exist?
for those not familiar, craftsman style moldings typically have very few, if any, coped or mitered corners. there's more of an emphasis on butt joints that transition from one style of molding to the next. for instance around doors and windows you have a casing that butts into the sill in the case of a window, and on the other end butts up to a crown type molding that lays on top of the casings.
on a door you have a cap on the bottom that the casing butts into, and the same crown type molding on the top that's also a simple butt joint.
the problem with this of course is seasonal movement. those butt joints tend to expand away from each other a bit without anything to hold them together. on many of my older pieces that are original they seemed to use some sort of epoxy along the butt joints to combat movement. this is of course overly tedious so i'm trying to avoid having to go this route. all of the molding is naturally finished with shellac and a varnish so caulking up badly fit joints as some do in new construction is out of the question.
unfortunately cutting butterfly inlays on a whole house full of molding is also too tedious to be feasible, what i'm looking for is a metal key that can be hammered in place quickly on the hidden backside of a joint.
i believe they're used on picture frames as well, picture frame makers call them miter keys. someone told me they saw mention of them on TOH and they were called bowties or some such.
problem is i can't find such a thing from searching around so don't know if anyone makes them anymore. does such hardware still exist?