HOME . SHOP . TOOLS . PROJECTS
Projects: Birch Window and Door Casing
Updated June 2007
We continue to make progress on a long-term project to
replace/install hardwood birch trim in the house. Further down
this page is a lengthy section written several months ago on the
particularly complex casing that was required for the 12' picture
window in the dining room. More recently, though, I completed the
casings for all of the windows and doors in the living room and entry
way. All pieces are figured red/yellow birch, spray finished with
blonde shellac.
The front wall of the house, standing in front of the fireplace:
From right-to-left around the living room, standing in the middle of the room. First, the entry way:
The front closet:
The front door (the upper profile had to be modified to fit in the corner):
The front picture window (actually completed earlier in the spring):
The french doors:
Finally, the window on the wall next to the fireplace:
Oversized 12' Window Casing
March 2007
Planning for how to approach this particular window casing took more than
a year. The primary difficulty was my inability to find red birch
planks in 14' or longer lengths, even though I searched nationally for
a number of months. While continuing to look for long planks, I
also explored other design options for building in seams or other forms
of joinery to obtain the needed span. Ideas included keystones
made of contrasting wood, splines, scarf joints, and half-laps, just to
name some options. I ended up giving up my search for extra
long planks and decided to try using finger joints to connect planks
end-to-end. Five planks needed to be finger-joined: 3"
apron, 5" sill, 2 1/4" inside upper casing, 1 1/2" upper bullnose,
and 2 1/2" top surface casing.
The arts & crafts design of the window matches the other windows in
the house that were done about a year ago. My wife and I came up
with the design on our own. The wood is figured red/yellow birch,
finished with blonde shellac.
The finished picture window that required all the joinery:
Construction
Unfortunately, my wife was not home while I was cutting the finger
joints on the router table, so I was unable to get pics of that milling
step. If I can reconstruct some sample pics, I'll edit this page.
By far, the most difficult aspect of this project was figuring out how
to set up a clamping structure to pull the mated fingers together.
It took significant clamping pressure to get a tight fit, and the
long planks also needed to maintain a straight line across the entire
length. As seen in these pics, I used 10' pipe clamps hooked on
the end of one plank, with the other end hooked on k-body clamps that
were tightly clamped to the other plank. The entire setup was
then clamped to the bench to keep one plank anchored on all dimensions
so that the other plank would be the only piece that moved.
After rough sanding to clean up the glue, I filled the seams with
a mixture of birch sawdust and glue, let it dry, then sanded everything
flush. The next step was to route the profiles on the
underside of the sill and the top bullnose.
After routing the profiles, the bullnose was glued to the upper casing to form a single upper piece.
The last step before finishing was finish sanding all the planks.
I sanded everything to 180 grit using a random orbit sander.
The final step was finishing. I sprayed shellac, two coats on
hidden surfaces as a sealer, three coats on visible surfaces, final
sanding with 220 grit, and one final top coat on visible surfaces.
Here are the finished planks ready for installation. Before installing, the finished surfaces were rubbed out with 0000 steel wool and paste wax.
And finally, the trim was installed. This is a picture of the set
of seams on the three upper planks (inside casing, bullnose, top
surface trim).
The whole project came out amazingly well, considering the complexity
and my lack of experience working with these types of long planks and
joints. Thanks for looking.
Back to top.