Replacing 150 year old Window Panes

Last weekend Jim and a couple of other local men got together and repaired the damages to the local church after our last wind storm. The only thing not touched were the three window panes which broke.

We had to wait for the temperatures to be above zero degrees celsius in order for the product we were using to be applied. We also had another storm coming, so on the one day this week that the stars aligned, we headed over to the church to get this crossed off the old to-do list.

Jim drilled holes in the ladder and attached a long board with screws in order to span the window. Worked like a charm.

Jim headed up with a heat gun but ended up not needing it after all. He just had to use scrapers and chisels to get the old painted putty off and get the window panes out.

Two of the panes were odd shapes, meaning not rectangular. One was cut at the glass supply shop from a template Jim supplied. The other was taken from an old window the church had in storage. We were crossing our fingers on those two.

They both took a little finagling. Jim would dry fit the pane and even flip it around to see which was the best or only way to fit the ‘square peg in a round hole’. Then it was back down the ladder where I would hold the pane in the proper direction and Jim would go back and clean up the sides of the window frame, scraping away any extra layers of paint or putty.

Once that one was complete we started on the little one. Here is what it looked like in the workshop while Jim got the glass out of the frame.

Again, a little shaving of the frame was required, but all in all it went in pretty smoothly.

And with that, a big broad stroke was made on our to-do list.

Later