Regular readers of this weblog will have gathered that we don’t usually shirk difficult tasks; some might suggest that we tend instead to the masochistic.   I’m not incapable, though, of considering where our efforts might best be expended.   We’ve been working on an exterior restoration project on an early Victorian house in the Ashmont Hill section of Dorchester.  One of the last remaining tasks was to reproduce two small curved molding elements that recurred many times around the house.  Something like half of the existing pieces, about 8 of each profile, were too crumbly or rotten for the painters to work with.  We removed an intact sample of each and considered our options. The original parts had been sawn out of solid…