I’m helping my uncle re-model a house in a historic district. The windows are not allowed to be swtiched out, so the owner is stuck trying to spice up these old ugly windows.
These things are really old, they have the counter weight system with the pulleys and stuff to make them work.
I am curious about the window glass itself, though. The glass is really warbled. One can only see through it clearly at a 90 degree angle. Anything more or less than that and the light coming through gets very distorted.
Is this an effect of gravity and aging on the quasi-liquid solid properties of the glass? Or is it just because glass technology was much less advanced and the super clear glass we’re used to today was not available at the turn of the century?
BTW, I’m not a historic scholar or architect. I’m not sure how old the house is, but I believe it was made sometime around the ‘let’s make everything really ugly’ period in the earlier half of last century.
Nope, strictly due to how the glass was made. The wavy glass was probably a lower grade of drawn glass where it is extruded between rollers. Most modern window glass is made by floating on top if molten metal. This makes it extremely uniform in thickness.
I renovated a 1920s-era Craftsman house that I owned several years ago. Most of the windows in the house had the original rolled glass.
Whatever you do, DON’T GET RID OF THE GLASS! It may be “warbled,” but it’s authentic, and something highly prized among many homebuyers and vintage home aficionados. If your uncle insists on replacing the glass, don’t throw it away! There is a huge market for vintage architectural fixtures, including glass.
If you have to strip paint on the window mullions, don’t use a heat gun. I learned that lesson the hard way.
The city won’t even allow him to replace the glass. He has to keep the historic value of the house or the city code enforcement will be pissed and ticket him. I said I would ‘accidentally’ break the windows if he didn’t want them.
“Yeah, officer, I don’t know what happened. One minute my nephew was gingerly restoring these priceless windows with a set of Swiss watch tools, a and a Bird-of-Paradise feather duster, and the next minute, he accidentally drops his extensive checker-faced framing hammer collection onto my high-speed turntable array, which I keep right next to my trampolines, and POW! … I just can’t explain it. It was all a horrible accident.”
Thanks danceswithcats. After managing a gun range for several years, the last thing I need in my body is MORE lead. I’m suprised my blood doesn’t set off metal detectors.
