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Above: A heat shield commonly used by plumbers while soldering joints helped me save the old glass in this fixed window. You can see the putty scraped easily off the rabbet just above the tape.
Over the weekend, I did myself proud by removing rock-hard glazing putty from a fixed window without breaking the glass. This makes me silly-happy because the opportunities for crashing glass were many:
- The heat gun seemed the surest way to loosen the old putty, but heat can cause the glass to crack.
- The windows bible, Working Windows by Terry Meany, advises patching old, hard, cracked putty instead of taking the risk of removing it and cracking the glass.
- That guy I live with thought it was nuts of me to take the long, treacherous path.
- I banged my scraper against the glass more than a couple times in figuring out the correct ratio of push to restraint in scraping off the putty.
But even with all these reasonable arguments, I went with my gut because, frankly, I think I’m the craziest devotee this house is likely to have in this century. The likelihood of one of my brothers or sisters in restoration buying this house in the future is slim. So it was up to me to save this window.
I will say it’s much more difficult to do this on a fixed window than on one that can be removed and worked at on a flat surface at your leisure. Doing this one meant balancing on a crate on a makeshift scaffold.
It meant noticing there was no sun to keep me warm. It meant getting the job done slowly and discouragingly on the day before the rain came.
But I’m so glad I took the chance. While I was searching for Sherwin Williams 66 glazing compound today (having remembered I’d meant to look for that type), I found a Web site that has a really nice rundown on the steps in this process.
As shown at the top of this entry, one tool I used to keep the glass intact was a heat shield that plumbers commonly use. Another was a heat shield that came with my Wagner heat gun. Neither of these were my idea—my clever cohort and other old house enthusiasts thought of these first.
Mostly for my own future reference, I want to note that I used this Zinsser primer.
And Dap 33 glazing compound.
I do still want to look into that Sherwin Williams 66. I’ve got plenty more opportunities to check it out, though!
I think it was six years ago, when the mower that came with the house decided to try to rip my arm off when I tried to start it, that we decided to get a cordless electric mower. The local choices at the time were pretty much Black & Decker or a mysterious brand called Elf. We bought a Black & Decker. So for years the mower was quiet, very easy to use and functional.
But this year it soon became obvious that the battery was on its last legs. After about five minutes it would lose power and slow down, then continue a slow loss of power until it pretty much wasn’t doing much. OK. So, I call the Black & Decker repair facility (I’d been there before over a recall issue) inquiring about a battery. $114 and I was happy to find out they could have it sent directly to me. So it arrives and I install it. Great. Except that it wasn’t working very well. The mower ran slow and lacked real power. So I took it apart again. Voltmeter showed the battery at 24 volts (what it is supposed to be putting out. However, when I turned it on the voltage dropped to 19 volts—not good. The “battery” is actually two 12 volt batteries hooked up in series. So I disconnected the bridge wire and found that one battery was reading 14 volts and the other 10. One battery was bad and they’re glued together.
So I called the B & D place again and they want me to bring it in. The main problem with this is that the place is 15 miles away down a very busy street. So they take it in and will make it great for $90. Whee. I get the call that it is ready and head back out to pick it up. I am at first confused because it isn’t my mower they wheel out. It is a refurbished (I suppose) newer model. Fine by me; I pay and leave.
First thing I notice is that the charger light never changes from red (charging) to green (charged). I use the mower and it seems kinda slow but seems to be doing the job. I call about the charger light and am told to bring it in again. Then yesterday I cut the grass and in the middle of my rounds the mower suddenly and for no apparent reason, doubles in speed—sounding much more like it should. I stopped it at one point and when I turned it back on it was slow again. But after a couple of minutes, again for no apparent reason, it speeds up again.
So today, I made the exciting trek again. I’ll get to do so again next week too. It better freaking work this time!
The only thing keeping me from being totally cheesed is that gas is $0.30 cheaper out there.
I would like to know how much time I have spent in my life looking for my favorite scraper. I would advise myself to buy another three of it, but it’s the one that came with the heat gun. I don’t even use it with the heat gun anymore because I usually choose the homemade infrared paint remover. One could also wonder how much time I have wasted blogging about looking for my favorite scraper. Ack.
