Materials & Process

MATERIALS & PROCESS

HARDWARE

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Lovely new lock. We applied the patina by tumbling, not chemistry. With the use of slotted screws it looks the part on a 100 year old window. This classic lock design needs no improvement. We use it on 90% of our work.

Beautiful. From Fort Washington's Officers Barracks c. 1837. Lock makers are learning from firearms producers about mass production. Fifty years earlier these parts would be cut and filed by a smith. The lift off hinges feel Blacksmith-made, but in the lock is the rumblings of the Industrial Revolution.

Hundreds of pounds of solid bronze hardware from the old Department of Agriculture, now the GSA Headquarters. All was stripped, tumbled, lubricated, and used again.

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GSA locks during tumbling process. Those little green tetrahedrons are the tumbler media.

This is a nice look, though not historic. The cast iron pulleys are tumbled, cleaned, and lacquered. Solid brass and slotted screw finishes it off — works even better in a stained jamb.

My experience in motorcycling, which started at nine years of age, has informed our restoration of architecture — metallurgy, physics of spinning, heat, fluids, friction, and much more. Purpose driven aesthetics and the glee of the making and fixing things that later can be enjoyed all enhance my appreciation of historic architecture .

The bike pictured here and the previous is a 1962 Triton. For me, in the late 80's, it started as a Norton frame and Triumph engine. I made all the bracketry and seat, and collected parts far and wide from many bikes. That is a wide-line Featherbed frame and a pre-unit Triumph 650 motor, two English classics from post-war England's cottage like industrial complex.

These are now not produced. Note the lefts and rights. They are laylight pivot hinges with detents. Most row house skylights were meant to function as chimneys. The curbs were ventilated and the laylight sealed things off in the summer. This excellent devise allowed the sash to be open vertically or at a 45-degree angle. We still have some in our hardware library.

Baldwin hardware is good. This stuff, from the P. House in Georgetown, is getting a revitalization after 50 years of service.

Just a door knob. Florence, Italy.

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This photo and following are from the Andrew Mellon Residence at 1785 Massachusetts Avenue NW. We have restored most of this material and it is available for reuse.

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Series of pulleys from the Octagon House c. 1803.

The locks pictured here have a secondary function where they clasp the sash together — not widely used though effective where components no longer align.

These glass knobs and brass back plates are an American classic. Common in the 20s and 30s and often mounted to doors with a Deco influence, there are Victorian Regency influences here. Good stuff — a cleaning and lubrication can put another ninety years of service ahead of them.

This image and the next three are an expression of what we will do to broaden our skills base at a bit of financial loss. These escutcheons could have been bought with the latches, but at the job we only need these. We fabricated a punch die from hardened steel to create the tapered relief in the plate. Using a simple hydraulic press we could do 50 in an hour — pretty fun and knowledge gained.

The pivot axel mounts from the jamb exterior and the receiver mounts to sash edge.

Craftsmen using our preferred brass and bronze cleaner.

This is bronze c. 1900 period. Bronze can carry more of a golden hue rather than the yellow of brass.

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On large projects every single piece of hardware is numbered per its opening.

While the hardware industry has gone to making many finishes available on brass and bronze as seen here in a selection of sash chain available to us, we prefer solid bronze or copper-plated for most projects with chains.

This hardware is from a cow barn in Rockville, Maryland c. 1930. We stripped, tumbled, and lacquered these original pieces for their now new use as a music venue.

Hardware in process from the former Textile Museum.

Hardware finished.

Bronze freshly out of the tumbler.

Chain does not completely clean in the tumbling process. Embedded paint is removed by hand.

These are riveted pulley housings from the mid-19th century. Later, single piece cast design was most common.

METAL FINISHES

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Lock from mid-19th century, Fort Washington. Industrial America is just emerging and expressed here is transitional technology. These parts are cut, not stamped, and most are hand finished. This lock can last centuries.

Hinges from the halls of Congress, half-way through the polishing process.

Bronze on the left, brass on the right, these parts are in the high-energy tumbler with a corn and walnut media. They will emerge with high polish in 12-minutes.

A polish this high is beautiful to behold, but will not endure without bi-weekly cleaning.

A mix of hardware from the 1930s and 1960s from the King Dairy barns. Cheap steel with failed plating is an odd candidate for restoration. The barns will become a country music venue and this patina somehow works. The hardware was cleaned, tumbled, and lacquered.

Cast iron parts for the C & O Canal Gates in Georgetown. Made at an Amish Foundry. There are few Foundries left that can do small projects like this. The Amish Foundry is still coal fired.

A lantern finial from Massachusetts Heights. We do some light fixture restoration generally when we are on a project engaged in window and door restoration. Very satisfying work, the corrections and repairs made can see that a beautiful thing lasts again another 100 years. This patina began its evolution in the 1920s. The top most element is zinc, the rest solid copper. So beautiful as it is, we were able to leave it unadulterated.

GLASS & GLAZING

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Graham at work ons site glazing Eastern Market sash. All the original ocular windows were gone due to decay and neglect.

Quinn Evans Architects chose a tinted glass for this historic building based on firm requests from long-term tenants.

Next few photos are a little how-to on glass cutting.

“Running” the slight imperfection created in the glass surface by a cutter can seem like magic.

For our first 20 years we gladly used DAP 33 glazing putty. We now prefer Sarco putty, not because the finish product is much different, but for its enhanced workability.

I don’t know that glazing putty has significantly improved in 300 years. Primarily calcium carbonate and linseed oil make for a doughy substance that cures hard in a few weeks and lasts about 100 years.

This and the next two photos depict the crucial steps in cutting laminated glass, a material we use more and more since these images from 2008. Laminated glass offers enhanced resistance to sound and thermal transition without the risk that seal failure creates in insulting glass units.

The paintwork that can be done with the sash on easels with good light and temperature control exceeds the quality of any that can be done on site.

This is the original Craftsmen Group. A carriage house in an alley in Columbia Heights. Here we have assembled a kiln that are want was to bow a 20SF piece of glass. Bowed windows are a specialty here. We can both make curved wood and bowed glass in house. Pretty neat what two craftsmen, two roofing torches, and some fire brick can do. The piece of glass here inside is now in a house off 14th Street at Rhode Island Avenue.

Oscar has been with the Craftsmen Group for 12 years.

Sometimes I find that scrap is more interesting than the piece itself. Above is our Fletcher Glass cutter for straight work, but these curves take skilled hands and eyes.

Currently we can not temper glass in house. These tempered pieces are from a trusted local distributer and will go in the Old Post Office Building . Glass below 18” from the floor must be tempered.

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LEADED GLASS

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MOCK-UPS

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An 1 3/4” thick Sapele Mahogany sash with traditional joinery and profiles adapted for insulating glass. We made 4,000 sash like this sample for the GSA headquarters. The deeper relief for the insulating glass panels complicates joinery and assembly.

Samples for the Rayburn Office Building replicating details from the early 1960s. This is stave core door construction where door elements have at their core something like a glued-up butcher block. This technique evolved in America in the 1880s once the woodworking industry was fully machine driven. This display describes the varied veneer thicknesses required for the unusual and “unbalanced” door design.

The thick veneer shown at the center-top sample is sawn, not sliced, not available for commercial purchase. We saw these veneers in-house. Sample on the right has a pine core, Baltic Birch underlayment, and factory-sliced walnut veneers.

The door design at Rayburn Office Building reflected the hierarchy of politics. One door face was flush, the other had recessed panels with bolection molding. This required the veneer be supported by the highest quality Birch plywood, so the flush face would remain stable while the panel-side could move.

At Rayburn we had an unusual advantage, we had the original architectural drawings. Those drawings described this door construction as “unbalanced”. Indeed it is, unbalanced and complicated, but at least the working classes are not luxuriated by the view to a paneled door.

PAINT

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My Benjamin Moore rep says this is the best paint they’ve ever made, and we agree. Expensive and worth it, high-bond, color retention, and most important for operable wooden windows, a surface tension higher than most other acrylic paints.

Catalyzed paint from Sherwin Williams for metal. Excellent gloss and bond. We became a fan when using as specified for Canal Gate parts for the lock gates in Georgetown.

Primer for the Acrolon. Outstanding bond and surface preparation.

We are stripping thousands of sash for U.S. Congress. This is a typical result out of the steamer. Modern latex paint applied over heavily decayed oil-base paint makes for a mess. When old oil paint becomes this degraded, they must be completely stripped.

Here, the latex paint acts nearly like a paint stripper where it bonds to the original coating now degraded to the point of nearly no bond.

This paint is dry. With a gloss unmatched, the fine paints of Europe, oil-based coatings, are dramatic and rich.

Applied to a stable substrate, this coating can endure 15 years. It makes for an outstanding front door finish.

FPE paint delivers exceptional results only after meticulous preparation and immaculate spray booth conditions.

Reproduction sash for the U.S. Navy improved thermal performance through insulating glass. The green is spray applied Macropoxy and Acrolon.

LEAD SAFETY

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