Wood Window Makeover

Been journaling a lot lately and have been making some major breakthroughs. Here's one.

Window Craft has two disciplines.

Creation and restoration.

Creation follows a natural order:

Joinery makes the parts.
Carpentry makes the parts useful.
Finishing protects the useful thing.

But restoration has its own order too.

When we approach a historic window that has been in service for a hundred years, we are not starting with raw material. We are starting with something buried, painted over, altered, choked, frozen, and forced into silence.

So the carpenter’s first task is not to impose a solution.

The first task is to dig.

Restoration begins as an archaeological act. We unearth the original, discover what time has done, diagnose the failure, prescribe the sequence, execute the repair, and finally protect the restored work.

The goal is not merely a better-looking window.

The goal is to bring the window back to life.

I wrote this out in more detail here:

The Two Disciplines of Window Craft: Creation and Restoration. Window Craft is an optimal blend of joinery, carpentry, and finishing governed by the mind of a carpenter. The carpenter is the controlling mind. In the Artisan Army, the servant is like a soldier, and that soldier is a carpenter. Joinery is his sword, letting him attack his problem confidently. Fin...

Today’s on site set up. Yes, I used the jointer today. Long live carpentry.

The carpenter really is at the center of Window Craft. Using practical joinery as a sword and finishing as a shield, the carpenter can diagnose, prescribe and execute the proper solutions in real time, and very quickly.

The carpenter without joinery and finishing? Well there’s not much that carpenter can really efficiently do with a 1920s double hung window, other than patch and hope.

But with the right tools - and joinery and finishing are the right tools - there’s nothing a Carpenter can’t do.

One of the difficulties a carpenter faces in Window Craft though - is actually seeing what the truth is. Before a carpenter can diagnose and prescribe, there has to be what could be compared to an archeological dig.

A window can be completely buried under an avalanche of time, paint, bad repairs and broken parts - and more paint on top of that. To get to the truth - that’s very hard work. Removing what’s not to be there to reveal what needs to be done - is sometimes the hardest part.

Another difficulty a carpenter faces is knowing what’s supposed to be there to begin with. There’s a building science locked up in a historic window that takes a bit of study to really understand and own internally. And it really takes this - entering the study - to figure it out.

I’ve seen, and known people labeling themselves as historic window professionals, take apart a window without understanding how or why it works. I’ve watched as they get things all tangled up unnecessarily. I’ve seen some go so far as to restore the equivalent of “stage props” and look alikes because this fundamental piece of the puzzle had yet to be added.

Being able to put this into words this way just occurred to me recently.

And I think it exposes one of the greatest flaws in the window restoration movement - it’s that up until now, people have been trained to look at the problem from the outside in, surface level, without understanding the inner workings of what they are doing. They beat their head against the wall unnecessarily.

I don’t think it started off this way. I read an inspirational article 20 something years ago by John Leeke about sash making - being able to make a sash if you needed to was a big part of restoration. And I think that article was written at least 20 years before I found it.

But somewhere along the way, the carpentry element was lost, and with it, the joinery. People ended up patching, not truly fixing and putting things back to right. Without carpentry and joinery, how could they?

It’s even gone so far now that there are entire franchises that capitalize on the quick fix and patch methods. People have been trained to view this as acceptable. And if joinery and carpentry don’t exist, what choice does the public have anyway?

So I have this picture of a frame with bar clamps holding it together while glue dries. How do I know what to do if I don’t have carpentry? If I don’t have joinery? If I don’t have finishing? It’s left to guesswork and hope.

And meanwhile the vinyl window people walk all over us and exploit that weakness.

Join me in class next Tuesday in inner city Tampa - we will be talking about joinery as it applies to the historic house community.

Together, through the study of Window Craft, we can start taking our communities back.

I had a pretty important realization this morning about the structure of Window Craft.

We teach three trades:

Joinery.
Carpentry.
Finishing.

But I think I finally saw the order more clearly.

Carpentry is the mind.

The carpenter is the one who stands before the opening and interprets the void in the wall. He investigates what is true. He studies what is broken, missing, bound up, rotten, out of square, or misunderstood. He asks what that opening needs in order to become useful again.

In that sense, the window is not just the wood, glass, paint, ropes, pulleys, and weights. The window is the ordered usefulness of the void.

But the carpenter needs tools to act on what he sees.

That is where joinery comes in.

Joinery is the weapon.

Joinery gives the carpenter the ability to make the parts that solve the problem. Not just patch. Not just scrape. Not just adjust. Not just compensate. But actually create, replace, reproduce, rebuild, and correct.

A carpenter without joinery is like a carpenter without a saw. He may still be useful, but he is incomplete.

And then finishing is the shield.

Finishing protects the work. It is not decoration first. It is defense first. Paint, primer, oil, glazing, bedding, and surface preparation are the armor that protects the solution from water, weather, sun, time, and neglect.

So maybe the simplest way to say it is this:

The carpenter is the mind.
Joinery is the weapon.
Finishing is the shield.

That is why the Artisan Army School of Window Craft begins with joinery.

We are not trying to turn everyone into a furniture maker. We are giving the carpenter his sword back.

Once he has that, he can stand before the opening, read the void, make what is missing, manipulate the space, and protect the work.

That is Window Craft.

I love to see people investing in themselves to develop agency - the ability to do for themselves what culture wants to strip away.

Pics are of students learning mortise and tenon joinery last night at the Artisan Army School of Window Craft - developing agency for themselves.

Join us as we study Window Craft and develop our own capacity to take back our historic house communities. Right now we are meeting Tuesdays in inner city Tampa.

All are welcome. Just let us know you are coming.

Btw, we are obviously establishing a foothold in inner city Tampa. But we can begin establishing footholds elsewhere in Tampa Bay also. It’s a big place with lots of need.

This is just the beginning.

10 people, a 12 x 12 pop-up shade structure, an hour and a half, some wood and some tools is all it took for everybody to make a mortise and tenon joint today at the Artisan Army school of Window craft.

We will meet next Tuesday and carry the lessons further. Let me know if you wanna attend. It’s an inner city Tampa.

Can you make a sash with hand tools? Sure. But where are you going to get the hand planes? Flea market? Make them yourself?

Can you make a sash with industrial equipment? Absolutely. But where you going to get it? Where are you gonna plug it in? Where are you going to put it?

The historic house communities need people who can make sash - this is how we get those communities back. And my sash factory is the only way I know of to do this with easily obtainable tools.

That’s why I’m offering the plans for this Sash Factory. The historic house community needs the capacity. Are they expensive? Yes. But the value you unlock by building one is indescribable. One sash factory builds thousands and thousands of sash - reliably and fast.

This is what turns out historic house communities around. And if you take my sash making class, you get a set with the program.

So enter the study of Window Craft today. Order your set and begin the journey. I’ll be here to help along the way. 

https://www.artisanarmy.com/product-page/sash-factory-build-guide

Come and enter the study of Window Craft.

When Moses called Bezalel and Oholiab and all of those He blessed with the spirit of craftsmanship to come build the Tabernacle of God, he also called "Everyone whose heart stirred him" to come too the work to perform it.

What is that work? In our context its the work of self mastery. Because, here is the truth - you can't master a tool or a movement without simultaneously mastering yourself. There's a monster inside that resists learning and forward movement. Some call it a wall, an obstacle or other things.

Window Craft is the opportunity to overcome and rise up as an Artisan.

More and more our world is being absorbed by AI. People are losing agency and the ability to do for themselves every day. Window Craft is the place where you go the direction that opposes the tide. It's an upward battle, but it's also an upward spiral.

Window Craft offers not only the opportunity for self mastery and growth as an Artisan - it offers the opportunity to grow as a community, as teams, as leaders.

In Window Craft there is not just one window. There are thousands and thousands and thousands. These are all opportunities for the upward spiral of growth into the ability to do for yourself what culture wants to strip away.

In a way, Window Craft is a rebellion. There are those of you who sense the need to resist. Window Craft is that resistance. It's a way to march into enemy territory and take your stand. Its a way to take back the territory that once belonged to the Artisan community.

If you are one who feels that call - Come to the Work to perform it.

Books are coming out soon that will help you join the movement.

Meanwhile - go out there and do something hard that no one else will do - do it for someone else. It will be practice for you.