Shaker Window Sash Profile

[Kevin Jenness]

There is no good reason to draw bore today's kiln dried wood. Most of the failed old windows I've worked on failed because the draw bored pin spelched the tenon out, especially if that particular rail was quarter sawn.

The good thing about pegged windows is that you can replace parts on 200 year old sash by driving the pegs out and taking it apart-see picture with replaced glazing bars in an 1798 sash.

I don't use glue in making reproduction 18th and 19th Century sash, shutters, or doors. The sash in this picture haven't been pegged yet, but weren't draw bored when they were.

Around here, all the remaining original 18th Century sash have 3/4" wide muntins. In the 19th Century houses they narrowed them to 5/8".

A molding plane is easy to use. You hog off most of the material to close to the profile with multiple passes on the table saw, and the molding plane just finishes. If you did a great job hogging with the table saw, the first couple of passes just takes off strings, and then a pass or two of very thin shavings to finish.

The size of this job is pretty close to break even between custom cutters and doing them by hand.

Tom, those are nice looking windows and a credit to your use of old hand tools. How do you go about coping the joints? Do you cut jack miters and undercut with a coping saw or do you have a coping plane? I am more of a wood machinist and have done similar work with a shaper for profiling and a custom ground router bit for coping. In the far distant past I made some doors with jack miters and relieved the sticking at the rail and stile intersections but that is quite tedious.

I do have a Freeborn shaper set for ogee sash but like the Infinity set James originally showed it is not adaptable to integral tenons and requires using inserted tenons or dowels for strength. Realistically one is forced to use dowels for narrow sash bars, not a great compromise. I like spline tenons for a lot of joinery but they are far from ideal for delicate sash work.

[Tom M King]

For big jobs, like the one with the stack of sash that totaled 38 sash for one house, I get a set of 6 custom bits made to my design One is just for a mirror image of the muntin profile for carriers for the coping setups. Every joint is a mortise and tenon, so the cope just cuts above the tenon.

For singles or a few, I cut the copes with jewelers saws. I say saws because I keep several with different tooth count blades in them. I like the older Trojan jewelers saws better than the Knew Concept ones, but that's a different story. I have a couple of coping planes, but they're not the fastest way or can be counted on to consistently turn out perfect copes.

The tenons for the rails to stiles are all through tenons, and there are typically three different length tenons on the glazing bars and muntins depending on location in a sash. I copy the original exactly to the point that parts can be interchanged.

I have been known to change the profile on an old sash plane to what I needed. Pictures of 1735 sash plane I bought years ago for $15. I never pay much for molding planes.

I used to have it in detail on my website, but the software that site was built with was so old that it was no longer supported so I couldn't edit out any mistakes it had accumulated over the years. It got switched from one provider to another several times, and the price kept going up. That and all the errors that made it not make sense, I just dropped it, so it's no longer on the internet.

I'm not taking on any more work anyway, and it mostly just drew people looking for free advice for the past several years. I'm busy maintaining the Ponderosa here (what locals call it) and working on it getting it to pay for itself so I can pass it on to my kids and it not be a burden for them (watch Yellowstone?).

[Tom M King]

Backers and carriers made from English Boxwood. Four 9 lite replacement sash made for that 1850 house in the picture with the shutters made all with hand tools including that reworked sash plane. Parts for them in the second picture, but I didn't take a lot of pictures of the whole process. I get paid to produce work. Videos and pictures just slow me up.

[Tom M King]

Complete router setup. PVC pipe is for air inlet and finger protection. Shop Vac gets 100% of the dust and chips-no exaggeration. Deck made from synthetic bowling alley surface. Fence run in same session that window parts were milled. Folded once paper under holddown top entry side provides clearance to feed piece in.

Anyone who has ever seen it work, including people who know nothing of woodworking, exclaim, "I Want One!!" The vacuum even holds the part to the fence. Six routers dedicated to sash production all look like they just came out of the box new. Recessed hole in the deck for the bit only allows bit shaft to come through with almost no clearance.

[Kevin Jenness]

Thanks for the response and all the pictures, Tom.

[Tom M King]

No problem. Those pictures were already here anyway in my gallery. I can do anything any house needs with tools and equipment necessary, having been building and restoring them for a living for 50 years now. Woodworking is just one thing on the list.

[William Hodge]

Tom, It's great to see someone matching existing sash, through tenons and all.
No Dominos and epoxy.