Mini Skirting

The other day there was a good blending of old and new technology. 

I was making 1:12 scale skirting for a project. 

 To do this I ended up using a top end sander and extractor along side a moulding plane I got from a car boot sale for £2! 

Lovely to use it - the perfect tool for the job!

Scribing Oak Skirting

I had to do some fairly difficult oak skirting last week. It had to be scribed both ways, into the floor and the wall by as much as an inch in places.

Showing how bad some of the walls were

With something like this I try to limit myself to being allowed to make three sets of cuts on each piece. One for the floor, one for the wall and then one just to make it a little tighter, all marked with a pair of compasses then cut with either a jigsaw or the electric plane and finished off by hand..

I can get it pretty tight in those cuts.

The scribe cut for the floor - a slight bow in it I'm sure you'd agree!

A bend in this wall made it really difficult as oak doesn't like to bend!

 The customer was really pleased with the result and it now means that the room can be finished. The pictures don't really show just how far out the floor was!

Charpentier

The last week turned out to be a bit of an adventure.
After a few phone call, someone going to Liverpool passport office for me and a ferry ride, I ended up going with a friend to work in France for the week!

Leaving England behind

 The job was to fit a flight of stairs, handrail out a balcony and to second fix as much of the house as possible. We got loads done over some really long days.
Unfortunately the stairs were a nightmare to fit. Whoever had measured them to fit had given absolutely no tolerance to get them in. They had winders round a complete 180 degrees so things became a little difficult. It would have been much easier if they'd had gone in before the house was boarded or plastered. We got them in in the end but we did have to cut the wall in a few places to make them fit.

These stairs were the most awkward I've ever fitted

Not much space to get them in

 The balcony handrail also took some thinking about, this went in easy once we decided on our method and looked really smart when they were finished

Balcony to be hand railed off

 The only difficult with them was clamping the handrail to the newel posts as the glue went off. Tom and me managed to quickly knock together a wooden clamp that could be wedged up so the glue could go off over night, leaving a perfectly tight joint in the morning.

Clamping the handrail together with a quickly built clamp

The adjustable end of the clamp

Balcony handrail finished

 Tom and me worked really fast doing the second fit together, I think we were both impressed with the amount of work we got done in the time. We had a good system going and each stuck to a certain job to increase speed and keep the quality high.

Tom routing hinges out of the doors

Oak doors, pine linings and MDF architraves and skirting fitted.

All in all it was an interesting experience. I enjoyed working with Tom Weston again - who is an excellent carpenter (I think we both learnt a lot from each other) and made good friends with the plasterer, Rick, who came out with us. We worked hard and did a serious amount of hours, but I was missing my family by the end of the week so I was glad to come back to a rainy UK yesterday.
I learnt lots and got some good stories to tell, not much more you could ask for really!

Fitting Skirting To A Curved Wall

I always like doing the out of the ordinary jobs on site. I like it even more when other trades have to ask you how you did it!

A relatively tight curve

This was the case with some skirting I fitted to a curved wall today. It was quite a tight curve and it wasn't a quick job to fix it on, but with a bit of preparation I got the skirting to perfectly match the curve of the wall.

Kerfing out the back of the skirting, as the curve was tight I needed lots

How's it done? Well you can read any good book on carpentry and it will tell you about "kerfing" the back or front of a board to make it bend round a curve. But until you try and do it you yourself you'll never know if you can do it properly or how close the cuts will have to be. A kerf is the width of material removed by the saw blade, adding lots of these evenly lets the wood bend a certain amount.

A good, even curve

This curve was quite tight and as the skirting had a moulding on it I could only trench the saw so deep on the first pass, I "kerfed" the back of the skirting for the length of the curve leaving a 2mm bit of wood in between each cut. I then trench cut deeper at the base of the skirting where it was thicker to remove even more wood. I then removed some wood from the back with the electric plane to try prevent it from cupping as all the tension had been taken out of one side with the cuts.

A job that when it's done right looks really good

To fit it to the wall I first fixed the short straight run, then started to bend it round the curve. To make the wood bend easier I first poured some boiling water on the back and trickled it over the skirting as I bent it round until I could get a fixing on the far side. I then added plenty of fixings to prevent it moving when it drys out.

Another enjoyable, usual job.

Anyone else have to fix curved work lately?

Tall Skirting And Wide Architrave

Although we're going to be using standard skirting through the main house, in the master bedroom and dressing room we needed to match the existing tall skirting.

This consisted of a 9 inch high skirting (which in the past they would have made on site). We managed to find a simular moulding off the shelf and with a couple of cuts on the table saw I managed to make it match the top of the old skirting excatly. I then used my biscut jointer to join this to some 7"x1" PSE which I had already added a chamfere to.

Tall skirting with stop blocks

Fitting skirting is always interesting in an old house as it can be difficult to find a fixing and the walls can be far from great. Luckily these walls were lath and plaster on timber battens, so I spent a little bit of time finding the uprights and it gave me a good fixing without too much bother.

I added stop blocks to four external corners as these are the bottom of an arched opening which I've got to add a curved architrave to next week (more on this another time!), having the blocks gives the architrave something to stop into rather than being knotched round the skirting - A much tider job!

Nice wide architrave

 

Wide architrave

 The architrave I fitted is made from two seperate peices planted one on top of the other. I love this wide architrave, I think it really sets a door frame off, much better than some of the tiny modern stuff we end up fitting!

How to Fit Skirting

Well the last two days have been spent on my knees.

I've not found a new religion- I've been fitting skirting board at Summerfield Park.

On an old property like this it can be a nightmare to fit. All the walls are out, nothing is square and the floor is as level as the Peak District! All this makes for some slow going if its to be done right, luckily I'm not on my own and another carpenter, "Rocket" is helping me and we're starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The skirting is fixed to the wall using a grab adhesive (like gripfill) and then screwed and plugged to the wall. All mitres are glued and pinned.

It's funny but its always easy to see when an amateur has fitted skirting (normally you notice this when your sat on someones toilet) and your see that an internal joint has been mitred instead of scribed. The scribe joint means that if the wood shrinks when it drys out the gap wont open whereas an internal mitre would open up leaving an unsightly gap (although I'm sure the spiders would love it).

To cut a scribe (in a modern "on site" sort of way) you first cut a 45 degree mitre on the skirting, sloping so that the end grain you see is where you want your waste to be. You then cut along the line left by the saw (see the picture above) with a jack saw (you can colour this line in with a pencil to make it easier to see). Undercutting this slightly makes it easier to fit the pieces of skirting together.

Next you take your copping saw and undercut round the detail at the top of the skirting (see above picture again).

This should leave you something like this.

Which will slot into another piece of skirting like this - Giving you the perfect scribe joint.

I can't tell you how many of these there are in this house - it seems to be the longest bit of skirting in some rooms it's 2' before you come to another corner! (although I'm probably exaggerating)