How to replace your broken window – Otago Daily Times

Feel like picking up ahammer or a screwdriver? Summer Times hopes toinspire you to start that DIYproject you were thinkingof finding time for over theholidays.

In the rules of backyard cricket, if you score a six you have to go and recover the ball.

You may also need to replace a broken window pane.

To do this you will need:

- Some glass. Measure the frame for the pane you need, allowing for the bits that will end up covered by putty. Tell a glass shop what sort of use the window gets and they will provide the correct safety rating of glass. Most shops can produce a glass order for pickup within a few hours.

- A small tub of window putty from a hardware store (or an old tub you may already have: add a few drops of cooking oil if it has dried out, and give it a good kneading).

- A hammer and chisel.

The newly-formed edges on shattered glass are sharper than the sharpest knife. Wear stout gardening gloves leather if you have them.

Place the shards in newspaper and wrap thoroughly before putting with your landfill waste (these are not disposable as recyclable glass here in the South).

The thin wooden glazing bars on an old-style window are quite fragile. Always bang a chisel along the length of wood, towards a corner. Glaziers use a special tool (a "hacking knife") to remove the old putty, but you can use a chisel in the normal way, or hit one side edge of a chisel with a small hammer, holding the other edge against the old putty.

Putty is a mixture of linseed oil and lime grit. If you put it against raw wood, the wood absorbs the oil and makes the putty dry and brittle. You can avoid this by painting some undercoat or rubbing some oil into the rebate of the window frame after you have cleaned out the old putty.

Give a big blob of putty to any children who are watching and let them play with it (the reason for this will become clear later).

Smear a little putty into the rebate, to go on the inside of the glass about as thick as the butter you might put on a cracker.

You can hold the glass in place with tiny nails (tap these these in with a chisel slid back and forth across the new glass while a finger holds the nail) or use "glazing points" the glass shop will sell you these; they can be pushed in using a chisel or large screwdriver.

Now get a sausage-sized blob of putty and give it a good kneading (if the kids havent done so already).

The idea is to warm the putty so the oil component becomes softer and the putty can be worked easily.

Form a nice diagonal wedge of putty around the new pane; try to match the putty on your other windows to get the look correct. Smooth it off by dragging a chisel or putty knife along the bead of putty, then rub with swift, light movements of the fingertips along the bead. This softens the outer layer of oil and forms a smooth skin.

The putty needs at least two weeks to evaporate off some of its oil to harden, so after two weeks, but no more than four, give it a light rub with fine sandpaper, then paint it, starting with undercoat.

Or, get the window professionally double-glazed.

This is a great improvement to a house but horribly expensive.

If you do one window a year its more affordable.

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How to replace your broken window - Otago Daily Times