Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Appreciating the wonderful wooden sash moulding plane.

A customer had a couple of old window sashes which were rotten. They wanted to make up the new sashes themselves, but asked me to machine up the material for them from a pile of rough old jarrah they had supplied. This arvo I measured the old component profile dimensions, and machined up the sticks over-long. This included cutting the glazing rebates and the mouldings.
Cutting the profiles with  a sash moulding plane. Stick mounted on a sticking board.

Amongst my growing range of wooden moulding planes, I have a couple of sash moulders. One was a pretty close match to the original, so I used it to run the profiles, after the sticks had been machined to the correct dimensions.

I then cut the rebates over the table saw. Job done. Now it's up to them to cut the wedged mortise and tenon joints and make up the sashes to replace the originals.
Completed sticks, machined, profiled and rebated.
Such a beautiful tool to use, cutting nice clean profiles in the jarrah components.
Wooden moulding planes have been around for centuries. They still have their place, and are a joy to use. No screaming electric router, throwing dust and chips everywhere... just the beautiful sshwiishhhhh sound of the moulding plane cutting the profile. Yes, these old moulding planes are a joy to use.