Tom at TC Woodworks specializes in creating replacement windows and doors for historic homes at his shop in Saint Paul, Minnesota. This includes the creation of custom-crafted mouldings and accoutrements for vintage homes. He also crafts one-of-a-kind cremation boxes. In his spare time, he makes unique, masterfully personalized dulcimers. Tom has been a wood craftsman for 50 years, and owned TC Woodworks for 35 of those years.
Tom was contracted by John Mathern at Equinox Construction LLC to work on an historic house in Meriam Park neighborhood. He was first contracted to repair or replace broken windows and to repair the weighted sash cords that allow the window to stay up when opened. There are not many businesses in Saint Paul that know how to repair broken sash cords. The sash cords often break because the home owners paint the thin ropes that keep the weights attached to the window sash. The paint weakens the rope and it breaks, not allowing the window to stay raised.
Tom and his (almost) grandson-in-law Donald Post did an assessment of all 30 windows in the house. Some of them were in good condition, but some needed some minor repairs. Four of five windows needed cracked glass to be replaced. The windows all needed the weighted sash cords to be repaired. These are some photos of the repair of those sashes.
Here are some "before" photos.
Here is a movie of one of the stained glass windows showing how smoothly it opens and shuts now that the sash cords have been replaced.
Tom's friend Bill had a newell post on his back staircase on which the finial had come off years ago and was never replaced. Bill discovered that Tom knows how to turn a finial from a block of wood and asked him if he could make a new one. Tom agreed and invited his grandson Donald to go to his woodshop so he could learn how to create a finial on the lathe. The video runs about 25 minutes, a bit long, but we are hoping that the people who really want to learn how to create a finial will stick with it and learn how to do something new.
Lathe at Tom's woodshop in Saint Paul.
Step 1: Create a drawing or pattern of what you want the finished finial to look like. You will need precise dimensions.
Step 2: Create the block of wood you will use. Generally this means that you will have to glue some narrower pieces of wood together to create a square block.
Step 3: Use a square to find exact center on both ends of our wood block. Drill a small hole in exact center of both ends, so the block will be centered and not wobble on the lathe.
Step 4: Put the exact center of our block of wood on the spur end (where the drill hole is). Then put the other end on the live end of the lathe (again where that drill hole is). Then use a heavy hammer to smack the live end to tighten the wood block to the lathe. Check for looseness, and correct by smacking the live end but not much that you crack the wood. Tighten it down gear handle.
Step 5: Put on your leather apron, and your polycarbonate face mask. Take safety seriously.
Step 6: Install the steady rest in its proper place on the lathe, making sure to get the top close enough to the exact center of the wood stock, so the lathe tool, which has some width, will be in the exact center.
Step 7: Turn on the lathe. Remember the lathe is turning the wood so it is coming at you over the top.
Step 8: Using a pencil, mark where you want to use a tool to shave off some wood to get the design you want. Hold the pencil steady on the steady rest, and let the lathe mark the wood all around in a perfectly straight line (assuming you did not move the pencil sideways). Mark every place where you want some differential in depth on the wood.
Step 9:
We drove down to Stockholm along the Wisconsin side of Lake Pepin to deliver some screen windows Tom had made for an St. Paul customer who had inherited an old farm get-away cottage. Tom brought eight (8) new painted screen windows with him. However, the original windows had more than likely settled and taken on slightly different shapes since they were built, so the screens would have to be fitted.
Here Tom is deciding which screen was made for which window. That was not as easy as it looked at first glance. Often he will have to make minor adjustments when he comes to install them.
Such was the case this time too. Here he is trying different screens on different windows to get the best fitting screen on each window.
He brought along a table saw in case he had to shave off a little here or there on the screens to get them to fit perfectly. In the case of this screen, he had to shave off a thin slice on the right side. Then, of course, that side of the window was no longer painted. So, he had also brought the exact shade of green paint the customer had originally used and painted the right side to match. As a general rule, TC Woodworks requests that the customer provide the exact shade of paint that the rest of his/her windows are painted.
There can be a number of tools that have to be carted to the customer's location in order to get every screen into the correct window and to fit perfectly once installed.
It was a beautiful day when we arrived, but a short rain shower did make an appearance before the job was completely finished.
The last job is screwing the turn buckles in to the window to securely fasten each screen to its window while still allowing for the owner to change out the screens for storm windows in the winter. Tom has a large supply of turn buckles in his shop to meet every window's needs.
One more satisfied customer!
Once the job was done, we headed back to St. Paul, stopping for some tourist photos at overlooks along the bluffs on Lake Pepin. Lake Pepin is essentially a wide space in the Mississippi River that qualifies as a lake.
It is a beautiful lake and it was a beautiful drive that day thru the woods along winding roads that came into and out of view of the river for miles and miles. Unfortunately, the famous pie shop along the way was closed that day. Bummer.
I joined the CERT (Central Certification Program) which is a collaboration among Ramsey County, Hennepin County, the City of Saint Paul, and the City of Minneapolis to "promote market growth and increase the competitiveness of qualified small businesses." Participation in CERT streamlines the process of bidding on and contacting for work on renovating government-owned houses in those three jurisdictions. The centralized certification process, which cuts down on having to certify separately for each job and replaces it with an annual certification, makes it much easier for a small business like mine to access contracts available with Ramsey County and the City of Saint Paul. My shop is a one-man operation. I don't have any office staff to help me with all the paperwork involved in getting certified as a responsible bidder for every job. Only having to do it once a year truly makes it even possible for a one-man shop like mine to bid on window replacement and renovation jobs at the City and County. It has worked out well for me.
The first job I got in the CERT program was a house on Burns Avenue on Saint Paul's East Side. I replaced 17 windows and repaired __ more. This photo shows some of the windows in my shop after construction, but before applying primer paint. I always prime my windows with oil-based primer before delivering them to my customers. I do offer the service of painting the windows if the client supplies the paint to match other windows at the house, but most clients prefer to do the painting themselves. Especially with a large project like the Burns Avenue house, the clients usually have already contracted with a professional painter.
I don't know if it is visible with the scale of this photo, but all my windows are designed to shed water without caulking. My clients never have to caulk their windows, which is one of the reasons for the popularity of my business. I have a video showing how this process, that was designed in my shop, works.
This photo shows the windows installed at the Burns Avenue house. The windows, except for the large picture window, have four "lights." Lights are just the number of separate windowpanes there are in a window. I do not add a fake cross piece of wood to just make it look like four lights. I build the window with four integral wood members with stops so that four separate glass panes are rabbited in to create the look you see on the photo. This is the way historic windows were made, and my business is authentically re-creating those historic windows.
I do replace doors as well, but was not selected to replace the doors on this particular project.
The sister of a friend who lives in Kerkhoven, Minnesota called to ask Tom to create some shatterproof storm windows for her screen porch. When she built her screen porch, she did not realize that living in the woods with the strong winds that sometimes blow in off the prairie would mean that occasionally a fairly decent-sized tree limb would break thru her screens causing her to have to replace the screens regularly. She took to putting up a stranded plywood covering over her screen porch on the north side. But that blocked her beautiful view and made the porch and the kitchen next to it too dark on cloudy days.
She had an idea to install storm windows over the screens - ones that could be removed in the summer months when she wanted a breeze in the screen porch. But the storm windows would have to not shatter if a medium sized tree limb hit them in a heavy wind. She asked Tom for his advice and he suggested poly carbonate windows. They would scratch, but they would not break. And they would let the light into her porch and her kitchen.
These photos show Tom measuring for the new storms (left in September) and delivering them (right in November). They needed a little bit of shaving off on some of the edges in order to get them to fit in the real world. Window frames are not always level and plum - which was the case with these windows.
These photos show Tom installing the windows on the client's screen porch. Tom's friend was the helper who kept the screws organized and available. The windows were held in place with stainless steel button clips that can easily be turned to the side to remove the storms in the summer, and then turned back into place when the storms are returned for winter.
The client called Tom a few weeks later to say she loves her new storm windows and was surprised at how much brighter it made her kitchen. She had two corner windows in the kitchen around the corner from the screen porch so she was not expecting that one change on the porch to have so much of an effect on the sunlight that came into her kitchen. It is always heart-warming to know that you have made someone's life just a little bit brighter.
A job well done!
Tom was the proud owner of a 1906 Crescent band saw until one of the other "makers" in his shop bought a bigger one. The Crescent allowed a 26" wide piece of wood to be cut. The new Neighborhood Wood Shop band saw allows a 36" piece wide piece of wood to be cut. Because of the thinness of the blade, a band saw can cut curves and a radius in a wide piece of wood. For this reason, it is indispensable in making arched-top windows and doors.
The 1906 Crescent was adopted by one of Tom's friends who owns a painting business. The Crescent Machine Company manufactured band saws like this from at least 1902 until 1940 when the company was sold to Rockwell, a division of Rockler Companies. This particular 26" band saw was manufactured 21 of the 38 years under the control of the Crescent Machine Company and are still highly prized as valuable vintage machines. Today Rockwell no longer makes band saws this large; the new manufacturers of larger sized band saws are Silver Manufacturing Company and Northfield Woodworking Machinery.
This saw excels at cutting curves (making a radius), resawing very thick lumber, and cutting logs into lumber.
The photo below shows Philipp, one of the other makers in the wood shop, and Phillip's nephew, using the 1906 Crescent band saw.
One of Tom's customers asked him to recreate eleven (11) large finials on his exterior porches (first and second floor) and exterior hand railing. Tom owns a lathe and he was happy to have an out-of-the-ordinary job to do. He made the finials out of cypress wood, because cypress has natural oil and exterior finials made from an oily wood will last at least three times longer than ones made of pine. It took him 3 weeks in his Selby Avenue shop to turn the finials. The photo below shows the finials after they were turned; the last item before delivery is always priming the wood with oil paint.
When they were delivered, his customer loved the new finials; he was very proud of them. Here they are sitting on Ed's Summit Avenue porch. There are two porches on the front of this house - one on the second floor and one on the first floor - with turned spindle railings on both porches.
The spindles were mostly in good shape, but the finials had split and cracked due to weather damage over the 100 years of the home's existence. Tom watched as his customer had the second floor porch floor (which was also the roof of the first floor porch) torn off and replaced, the railings removed, repaired, and replaced. And finally Tom's beautiful eleven (11) finials were placed on top of the newell posts. They were only primed and not painted when this photo was taken.
And here are the finials after they were installed and painted.
