Category: Doormaking and Window-Making

As the Industrial Revolution mechanized the jobs of the joiner – building doors and windows by hand – one anonymous joiner watched the traditional skills disappear and decided to do something about it.

That joiner wrote two short illustrated booklets that explained how to build doors and windows by hand. And what was most unusual about the booklets is that they focused on the basics of construction, from layout to joinery to construction – for both doors and windows.

Plenty of books exist on building windows and doors, but most of them assume you have had a seven-year apprenticeship and don’t need to know the basic skills of the house joiner. Or the doors and windows these books describe are impossibly complex or ornamental.

“Doormaking and Window-Making” starts you off at the beginning, with simple tools and simple assemblies; then it moves you step-by-step into the more complex doors and windows.

Every step in the layout and construction process is shown with handmade line drawings and clear text. The booklets are written from a voice of authority – someone who has clearly done this for a long time.

During the last 100 years, most of these booklets disappeared. Soft-cover and stapled booklets don’t survive as well as books. And so we were thrilled when we were approached by joiner Richard Arnold in England, who presented us with a copy of each booklet to scan and reproduce for a book.

Below is the introduction that Richard Arnold wrote for us. It is a family story that comes full circle and brings these booklets with it.

The story of how this book has come to be republished is a tale that goes back more than 100 years.

At the end of World War I, one of the lucky survivors of the trenches came home to England and started a new career as a carpenter and joiner. He was my grandfather, and his name was Cecil Incles.

Sometime during his apprenticeship, he managed to purchase a tool chest – complete with tools – that had belonged to a joiner by the name of G. Shelton. To date I have not been able to find any clues as to who Mr. Shelton was, but by dating the tools in his chest, it is reasonably safe to assume he assembled them sometime around the end of the 19th century. Judging by the types of tools in his chest it is obvious that he was a joiner, and amongst other things, he would have spent a lot of his time making doors and windows.

Lying in the bottom of the chest were two well-worn little booklets on door and window-making. They date from around 1910, so I think it is safe to assume they were first purchased by Mr. Shelton. I’m sure he found them helpful, as I presume my grandfather did after him.

On completion of his apprenticeship, my grandfather moved back to his birthplace and started work for a small building firm in a nearby market town. For the next 50 years, he worked as a joiner for the same company right up to his retirement. After his death in 1976, my father decided to hang on to my grandfather’s old tool chest, along with its contents, a decision that I am forever grateful for.

Two years after my grandfather’s death, I left school at age 16 with no clear idea of what I was going to do with my life. As luck would have it, the old building firm that my grandfather had worked for was looking for an apprentice to train in its joiners’ shop. So with hardly any woodworking experience at all, I found myself working under the watchful eye of “old Arthur.” Coincidently, Arthur had been one of my grandfather’s apprentices. My father had no great interest in woodwork, so he was happy to pass the tool chest and its contents to myself to use in my new career.

It is no exaggeration to say that this tool chest, and more importantly its contents, changed my life. Most of the tools in the chest were of no use in a modern working environment, but I became fascinated as to what they had been used for and how they were used. This led to a lifelong passion for anything to do with the history of woodworking, and the tools and techniques that surround the subject.

I soon discovered the two little booklets in the bottom of the chest, and I was surprised as to how relevant the information within them was to my everyday work. In time, they became my main point of reference whenever I’m working on doors or windows.

In the age where doors and windows were made by hand, the apprentice learned the basics under the watchful eye of his master. No one expected to have to record these skills; they were merely the basics, passed down from one generation to the next. But with the onset of the machine age and mass production, a lot of these techniques were soon lost.

The anonymous author of these booklets must have had the foresight to see this coming, and we should be forever grateful to him for recording his obvious years of experience making doors and windows as a joiner.

For years, I have recommended these wonderful booklets to fellow craftsmen, but sadly I could offer them no hope of finding copies for themselves because they rarely, if ever, came onto the open market. I would like to applaud Lost Art Press for making them available once again to everyone with an interest in keeping these traditional skills alive.

Richard Arnold
November 2013
Northamptonshire, England

The following is excerpted from “Doormaking and Window-Making.”

As the Industrial Revolution mechanized the jobs of the joiner – building doors and windows by hand – one anonymous joiner watched the traditional skills disappear and decided to do something about it.

That joiner wrote two short illustrated booklets (combined here into one volume) that explained how to build doors and windows by hand. And what was most unusual about the booklets is that they focused on the basics of construction, from layout to joinery to construction – for both doors and windows.

Plenty of books exist on building windows and doors, but most of them assume you have had a seven-year apprenticeship and don’t need to know the basic skills of the house joiner. Or the doors and windows these books describe are impossibly complex or ornamental.

“Doormaking and Window-Making” starts you off at the beginning, with simple tools and simple assemblies; then it moves you step-by-step into the more complex doors and windows.

The fitting and hanging (or hingeing) of doors in a proper manner, is quite as important as the making, therefore we include the present chapter in this hand­book, with the idea that it would not be complete otherwise.

To fit a panel door of any description, first take the exact width of the opening and transfer to the door, taking a piece off each stile if necessary, so that these will appear of equal width. If the door simply requires planing, which is as it should be, or if wider, after sawing off the waste at each side, plane the left­-hand stile and fit it to the corresponding post, then do likewise with the other, making the door so that when close up to one side there is a space of a six­teenth of an inch parallel at the other.

The door must now be placed in position, close up to one post, as in Fig. 124, and scribed along the bottom with compasses. Whether the projecting stiles only are cut off, or a certain portion of the bottom rail as well, depends upon the height of the door com­pared with the opening. If the one is much higher than the other, a good portion of the waste should be removed from the bottom rail, leaving the top rail the same width as the stiles. This, of course, must be ascertained by actual measurement before scribing. Having scribed and cut off the bottom of the door, stand it up again, and mark the height required on the stiles, and in cutting off at the top, allow for the same play here as at each side and slightly more at the bottom.

In planing the edges of the door, that on the hanging side may be planed exactly square; but it is best to plane the other edge slightly under, as at A, Fig. 125, thus giving the door more clearance as it opens : especially does this apply to thick doors – in fact, in many cases the rebates are bevelled if the doors are thicker than one and a half inches.

The fitting of ledge doors is the same as described above,· except that so much trouble need not be taken, there being no stiles to keep equal in width.

For outside doors the play at sides and especially at the bottom must be greater than for inside, other­wise they will be liable to stick and require easing; while in many cases more play must be allowed at the bottom of room doors, to allow these to open over carpet or linoleum : of this, more later on.

If the doors are alike both sides, as in ordinary room doors, the hollow side (if the door is not flat, as is sometimes the case) must be fitted towards the rebates, as in Fig. 126 A – the fastening will then keep the door tight ; but if the round side is put to the rebates, as Fig. 126 B, there will always be a space at top and bottom, and the door will also rub the post in the middle, at the hinge side, as it opens.

For ledge doors the usual hinges are the “cross garnett ” or “tee” hinges, examples of which are given in Fig. 127. The fixing of these is very simple: the door is stood up in position, blocking it so that it has the correct play all round, and the hinges screwed on as in Fig. 128. The top hinge should have the knuckle immediately over the joint, but the bottom should be placed back further on to the post as shown. This has the effect of throwing the front of the door up as it opens, as shown in Fig. 129.

Panel doors are invariably hung with “butt hinges,” a front and end view of which we show in Fig. 130, and these may be fixed by letting the whole thick­ness into the door, as Fig. 131 A; by letting half into the door and half into the post, as Fig. 131, B, or by letting them in on the skew, as Fig. 131 C. The first is the jerry builder’s method, being done quickly; the second is the joiner’s method, and the correct one for all purposes as regards house doors ; while the third is usually adopted by cabinet makers, and is correct for furniture, but more difficult to do properly. The “butts” should be let into the door first, the correct positions being 6 ins. from the top and 10 ins. from the bottom of the door. The distance on the edge from the face should be slightly less than the width of the butt to the centre of the pin on which it turns, and the depth of the recess should be the thickness of one leaf of the butt. The length of the recess should be marked by laying on the butt itself, each one in the position it will fill, as they vary in size slightly.

The recess as marked is shown in Fig. 132, while Fig. 133 A and B show the effect of letting the butt in too far on the edge, and not far enough respectively, the one causing the door to scrape the frame as it opens, and the other leaving an ugly gap between when the door is open. After letting the butts into the door, and screwing them tightly, the door should be placed in position, blocking it so that it has its proper play all round, as in Fig. 134. Then with the butts open, mark on the frame at the bottom and top of each for the height, and down by the knuckle for the depth of the recess. The door can then be removed, the height marks squared across, and the gauge used for the width. On cutting the wood out to the marks, the door may be fixed temporarily with one screw in each butt, and if found to be correct (as it should be) the remaining screws can be inserted, while, if not correct, alteration must be made accordingly.

In the above description we are assuming that the door and frame are both made true – that the door is of parallel thickness, and the rebate slightly deeper to give the necessary play; but in many cases we regret to say that the frame is rebated without any regard to the thickness of the door, and if so, the door may either bind on the rebate, if the latter is not deep enough, or may not fit close enough to it, if too deep. To get over this difficulty, the gauging for the width of the recess should be done from the edge of the rebate, and the inside of the door respectively, taking great care that the hinges are not let in far enough to make the door bind, as in A Fig. 133.

Doors may be made to rise as they open by using rising butts, but these are clumsy in appearance : the only difficulty in fixing is to take special care to get them fitted correctly, and also to get them the right hand for the door, or they will throw the door down instead of up.

Instead of using rising butts, the door may be made to rise in front as it opens, by allowing the bottom butt to project more than the top one, as in Fig. 135. This means different gauging for each butt, but it often has to be done, the floors in many cases being low at the doorway, owing to the weight of the walls causing the joists to settle slightly.

Spring butts, both double and single, are fixed in exactly the same way, and also all other kinds of hinges, the principle being the same throughout.

One word as to fitting of folding doors: care should be taken to keep the outside stiles on each door the same width, even if the middle stiles are not exactly the same. Also take care to keep the rails in each pair of doors level, or the appearance is spoiled. Fig. 136 shows a pair of doors correct in respect to the former point, but incorrect as to the latter; while Fig. 137 is the reverse – the rails are right, but the stiles are uneven. A little care in fitting will make both right, and there is no excuse for neglecting it.

The following is excerpted from “Doormaking and Window-Making,” by anonymous.

As the Industrial Revolution mechanized the jobs of the joiner – building doors and windows by hand – one anonymous joiner watched the traditional skills disappear and decided to do something about it. That joiner wrote two short illustrated booklets that explained how to build doors and windows by hand. And what was most unusual about the booklets is that they focused on the basics of construction, from layout to joinery to construction – for both doors and windows.

Plenty of books exist on building windows and doors, but most of them assume you have had a seven-year apprenticeship and don’t need to know the basic skills of the house joiner. Or the doors and windows these books describe are impossibly complex or ornamental.

“Doormaking and Window-Making” starts you off at the beginning, with simple tools and simple assemblies; then it moves you step-by-step into the more complex doors and windows.

Every step in the layout and construction process is shown with handmade line drawings and clear text. The booklets are written from a voice of authority – someone who has clearly done this for a long time.

During the last 100 years, most of these booklets disappeared. Booklets don’t survive as well as books. And so we were thrilled when we were approached by joiner Richard Arnold in England, who presented us with a copy of each booklet to scan and reproduce for a book.

VENETIAN, or, as they are sometimes called, mar­ginal light, windows are very fashionable at the present time, having in a great measure replaced the bay window, although the same style is some­times adapted to the bay, instead of the usual up­side-down sliding sashes. These windows are, as may be gathered from the drawings, of the casement variety, and the sashes should be made to open outwards if possible, this being the better way to keep out the wet.

In Fig. 108 we show one of these windows fitted with four lights or casements, the two outside ones being hinged to the jambs, and the two middle ones, which fold together, being hinged in like manner to the mullions. The casements in this frame run from sill to head, the upper part being divided into small squares as shown, which is the simplest way of forming an artistic window.

Another method of filling in these window frames is shown in Fig. 110, which shows the filling between the mullions. Here the casements are in two heights, the bottom pair being hinged in the ordinary way to the mullions ; the other, which is wide enough to fill the whole space, is hinged at the top, and opens outwards, the bottom rail of this fitting to the others either as section, Figs. 111 or 112. The former is the simplest way and least liable to get out of order, but the latter is best as regards the stopping out of wind and water; but when the window has been repainted a few times it is apt to work badly.

Windows made in this way are very convenient, as it is possible to have the top only open, or the whole, as required. The folding casements in either style of window come together with a rebated joint, as Fig. 113.

Suitable sections for head and sill for these frames are shown in Fig. 114, the grooves in the latter being to form a cement key under, and to take the window board. It will also be noticed that the bevel of the sill finishes with a hollow, forming an undercut rebate ; this should not be omitted, owing to its use as a water trap.