When we arrived at our job site last week, we found this roof snow impersonating a sheet of over-warm plastic. The temperature was a touch above freezing, and the overhang didn’t last very long.
Tagged: flow, plastic deformation, roof snow
Our client, an architect specializing in masonry building conservation, knew she didn’t want to preserve the brown tiled mantle that previous owners had built. The mantel and hearth were designed for a wood-burning stove that she and her husband never used, and the mantel had a jarring presence in their living room. She designed (and we built) the new mantel and flanking bookcase to have a cleaner, more classic appearance that fit in better with other details in the house. The crown molding we added also helps tie the new work in with the rest of the room. And the gas fireplace provides warmth and convenience that the earlier hole in the wall couldn’t muster. The fireplace is made by Regency…
After my obsessions in the previous posting about the shapes of back band molding profiles, it was nice to get the opportunity to return to the physical realm and run some molding. The wood species is poplar, our standard choice for paint-grade millwork. We ran the profile on one of our SCMi shapers. This refrigerator-sized beast is essentially a stationary version of a hand-held router, but as when moving from a pedal bike to a large motorcycle, there are some qualitative operational differences. The cutting head holds a pair of custom-fabricated knives to match the molding profile we want to reproduce. Connecticut Saw and Tool fabricates the knives for us from a drawing of the original molding.
Tagged: bed molding, Connecticut Saw and Tool, molding profile, poplar, SCMi, shaper, shop work
We had saved as much of the original door and window casing as we could before starting demolition. Now that we were creeping toward the final stages of the project, we had to figure out if we had enough salvaged material, or if we would need to make shaper knives to replicate some of it. Greg did the inventory, and it looked like we had enough casing, but we would be short of band molding. I asked him to bring me a sample of the band so I could get the knives made, but the piece he brought me (above on the right) didn’t look quite right. It was made of poplar, which would have been a very unusual species for mid-19th-century trim,…
It’s always gratifying to know that our clients are getting use out of the things we build them. In this case, Esther the cat took up residence on the mantel within five minutes of our finishing the installation.
We had finished the carpentry for the kitchen, and the only thing missing was the table. The clients and architect had long planned a large, counter-height table to complete the kitchen, but a suitable table was not presenting itself. The unusual dimensions almost certainly precluded finding a pre-built table, and no custom design had gelled yet. The call from Paris (Texas) broke the logjam. It turned out that our client’s grandfather, a woodworker, was close to retirement, and he was clearing out his shop. He had a pile of walnut that he’d had cut almost 50 years before and never gotten around to using. Would his grandson be interested in it? He was, and worked to convince me that I should be too. Several…
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…
Tagged: casting, conscience, curved work, Hobbs, Molding, Reynolds Advanced Materials
In the good old days, when fuel was cheap and carpenters were simple, no one cared a whit about insulation and — God forbid! — energy performance. But now that we’re out of Eden, we need to concern ourselves with more than roof framing and perfectly coped crown. Thermal performance, rain screens, and indoor air quality are now firmly in the carpenter’s bailiwick, but can be much more abstract than a tight-fitting miter joint. That’s why I’m always looking for instances where building science reveals itself in glorious, explicit detail. On a recent morning, I noticed this stripey pattern in the dew on my roof. (Ignore the leaning chimney — it’s an experiment in non-Euclidean masonry) Years ago I might have though,…
Tagged: building science, closed-cell foam, insulation, roof, Thermal bridging
I believe it’s rare for tradespeople to think of themselves explicitly as business owners, and I’m not an exception. We see ourselves as makers of things, and we grudgingly accept the business side as the necessity that allows us to keep making. For example, in the past when people asked me about my business model, I used to fumble for a coherent answer. I’ve gradually come to realize that I do have a business model, though it’s been implicit for much of my company’s existence: We can succeed if we provide products and services that can’t be replicated in a factory. We’re based in Boston, where wages and expenses are very high, and we rarely make the same thing twice. This is not…