The Joiner’s Clever Habit of Saving the Best Timber Ends for Sash Windows.
Working timber yards have a habit of storing all timber, long and short, in separate piles. And the short ones, particularly the ends of the lengths, are taken off the main pile and stored on a separate shelf. The joiner’s of Georgian and Victorian times knew that the ends of slow-grown trees had timber of a completely different make-up to the rest of the length.
Georgian and Victorian joiners were skilled craftsmen who understood how trees grew and the differences between the ends of slow grown trees and the remainder of the timber. These joiners would always reserve the best ends of the slow grown timber for making the tenons for the sash components. The ends of slow grown trees have been subjected to many years of compression at the base and as a result the annual rings are very close together and very dense, often twenty or more rings to a centimeter. This makes the timber very hard and very resistant to taking water as opposed to the remainder of the timber which may have eight or ten rings to the same area.
Sash components are made from timber and subject to great stress. The tenons cut into the mullions at the corners of sashes are pushed and pulled every time the sash is opened and closed. The horns at the base of the upper sash are used to lift the entire sash frame during installation and subsequently. The meeting rail of the sashes is subject to great pressure and must resist shrinkage and movement due to changes in moisture. It is these critical components that the old joiners would have reserved their best, slow-grown offcuts for.
Modern fast-grown softwood used for sash window repair does not make as reliable a component as slow-grown timber of the past. The tenons will work loose too soon; the horn will split along the ‘open grain’; the meeting rail will swell up too quickly in wet weather and stick. Historic England’s guidance on structural timber in historic buildings states in its general notes on grain density and timber origin that these two factors are crucial to any repair of old structures. They are far more important than any mere aesthetic consideration.
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The joiner’s shelf of saved ends was not sentimentality. It was an understanding that the best part of the tree had always done the quietest, most necessary work.