The job: As a part of the upgrade of a period Scottish home for an existing customer, our team have been tasked with replacing 36 sash-and-casement windows to match the original style.
In this two part series, we’re going to be visiting our workshop, to see how our joiners employ traditional hands-on skills to realise these beautiful bespoke windows.
Our approach: The windows are being made from European Redwood (Pinus sylvestris), sourced locally from sustainably-managed forests.
The pine arrives in off-sawn battens, similar to the hardwood ones shown picture below left below. These are then selected for quality, or rejected. Next, our joiners dress the battens down into individual components, such as the profiled styles and astragals for the sashes appearing picture right below.
The first part of a window to be made is the casement (or case) –the outer frame– which is made to the specific measurements of the building opening it is to fit (picture left below). The dimensions of each casement, in turn, determine those of the components which make up its sashes, or the window parts which slide up and down (picture right below).
A window also involves four weights, two each for the top and bottom, concealed behind the outer casement. To open smoothly and effortlessly, yet stay reliably open when released, this requires a finely-tuned balance between the weights and the sashes.
All of this entails highly-skilled traditional woodworking. Each and every component is unique, handcrafted and assembled for a perfect fit and finish. Below left, the picture shows a sash during constructed, and to the right, one our talented joiners, Neil, trimming a sash on a planer at a later step in the process.
When all the components are ready, the joiner brings casement, sashes, and weight mechanisms together into a single window for the first time, to make sure everything fits and works exactly as it should.
Two such windows appear in the picture above. Click here to read Part 2, about how they’re taken from this stage through to completion, and their new home.
What our workshop manager said :
Not a lot of people realise the amount of time and traditional craftsmanship it takes to make one premium sash-and-case window. Each one is unique.
