Any body had any experience in making interior plantation shutters? I understand that bass wood is great for painted work. Any suggestions on plans, kits, sources for reasonable priced bass wood and your 2 cents would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, Herb
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Herb,
I live in South Texas and several years back I made 30+ plantation shudders for most of the interior windows in our house. It was a fun (although repetitive) project with over 600 louvers! I built mine out of Poplar and sprayed on an interior oil-based paint. Most of our windows are based on 3ft x 6ft modules (some double wide and some triple wide) but a few were odd-balls. As a result I was able to build most of the windows with standard dimensions with some variations. As you can imagine this project required some detailed organization. I used a spreadsheet on a computer to keep track of all the parts, their dimensions, and quantities.
There were several challenges that I had to overcome to complete the project. Fortunately several friends had commercially made shudders installed in their homes that I could inspect when designing mine. I needed a way to create the 3? wide louvers with a nice curving cross section (like you would see on a commercially made set). To solve this I purchased a 13? molder/planer and had a custom set of knives made (~$1000 total). The molder put the curve on one side of the louvers at a time. 1200 passes through the molder and I had stacks of lovers in the garage.
I assembled the shudders in stages, about 4 at a time. This is all I could handle at one time. The next challenge was to the pivots for the louvers. Most commercial shudders pivot freely on all the louvers except one. On this one a screw is used that can be tensioned to adjust the friction when the louvers a tilted up or down. These usually need constant adjustment to keep them from falling open due to the weight of the control rods. I used standard finish nails with their heads cut off as the pivot. I dropped each nail into a hole in a scrap block of wood and cut the head off with a pair of bolt cutters. Using a jig on the drill press I drilled a hole slightly smaller than the nail in each end of the louvers and drilled corresponding holes in the stiles that were slightly larger than the nails. The depth of these was such that the pointy end protruding from the louvers ?bottomed out? when assembled. This pressed fit (with a small dab of wax on the end of each nail) has resulted in the perfect amount of friction to make the louvers operate smoothly. By the way I also put a small plastic washer on each nail to maintain a balanced reveal on each side of the louvers.
Next I had to create a jig for my ¼? pneumatic stapler so that I could drive a staple in the edge of each louver and leave it ¼? proud. These are intersected with staples on the control rod to tie all of the louvers together.
I installed the shudders on the inside of the window frames, which required special wrap-around hinges that attach to a strip of wood behind each shudder. This strip of wood is screwed through the dry-wall into the framing. You may have to special order these if this is how you are going to install yours.
Lastly, I wanted a smooth professional looking painted finish. I had spray equipment but I found it took some experimenting to get it right. I ended thinning the paint way more than you would think necessary (one part thinner to one part paint).
All in all it was a very satisfying project. I figure, based on the quotes to have a professional do the job, that I saved enough to buy a small car.
Good luck,
Dean
Dean: There will be some interest in the jig and method used with the staples. There was a recent thread, perhaps on Breaktime, about the traditional stapling tool used for shutters and how very expensive it was. Can you provide any details/drawing/pix ... of the jig and method (I'm very interested). Thanks.
Dean, Thanks a lot, great info, a lot of work and planning went in to your project. I see that I failed to mention that I currently live in central New Jersey and the custom shutter makers here are really expensive, e.g. half window, 31" wide by 29" high - $325 each made from engineered wood(wood composite). I am retired military, McAllen, TX; good ole Rio Grande Valley Boy!!!!!
One daughter lives north of Dallas and had her plantation shutters done by a custom shutter maker in McKinney, TX - very good quality but more money than I want to spent when I can do it myself - I hope. Popular is a good choice and readily available. The McKinney folks said that for painted shutters they use FAS Bass wood. I too would like to know more about your jig for stapling.
I am renovating an 80 to 100 year old house and the project has its ups and downs. Not to brag but everything I have done has come out okay while all the contractors jobs have been nothing but headaches and expensive, time consuming corrections.
I just discovered the forum even though I have subscribed to Fine Woodworking since almost its beginning. Great source because woodworkers are great people.
Once again, thanks. I hope to become a regular, timely reader. Herb Worff
Herb,
I hope the info helped. It was late last night ? thus the shudder vs. shutter reference.
As far as the staple jig goes, it wasn?t much, just a piece of wood screwed to the nose of the stapler. Unfortunately the cover for the nose trigger had to be removed to attach it. The jig also held the trigger armed so some caution had to be exercised.
Basically, their was no design for the jig I just cut and shaped it so the edge of the louver was held about ¼? from the nose of the gun. The wood was screwed to the nose of the gun and held the top-side of the louver. A 3/8? hole was drilled just south of the nose so I could see a pencil mark at the center of the louver?s front edge. The back edge of the louver was held by a piece of sheet metal I had lying around. A piece of wood would have worked just fine. I wish I had a drawing I could fax you, but I don?t.
From what I could tell from the thin profile of the control rods on the commercially made units they must have stapled the rods first and then, with the rods on their sides, stapled through them into the louvers. I never had the chance to see the ?traditional? jig so I had to guess at how it was done.
I made my control rods a little thicker (~1/2?) and I stapled the louvers first. The jig would have been too complicated to do it the other way around. After the shutters and control rods were painted I marked the locations for the staples on the back-side of the control rods by pressing one into the painted finish with a pair of pliers. Then, with a small drill made from a wire nail smaller in diameter than the staple wire, I drilled a hole for each staple leg. With this done, I manually pressed each staple into the control rod through the corresponding louver staple with a pair of channel-lock pliers. I wrapped one jaw of the channel-locks with duct tape to keep it from marring the control rods.
It sounds like you have an exciting project on your hands with your house restoration.
Good luck, I hope this helped in some way.
Dean
Herb,
I hope the info helped. It was late the other night ? thus the shudder vs. shutter reference.
As far as the staple jig goes, it wasn?t much, just a piece of wood screwed to the nose of the stapler. Unfortunately the cover for the nose trigger had to be removed to attach it. The jig also held the trigger armed so some caution had to be exercised.
Basically, their was no design for the jig I just cut and shaped it so the edge of the louver was held about ¼? from the nose of the gun. The wood screwed to the nose held the top-side of the louver and had a 3/8? hole drilled just south of the nose so I could see a pencil mark at the center of the louver?s front edge. The back edge of the louver was held be a piece of sheet metal I had lying around. A piece of wood would have worked just fine. I wish I had a drawing I could fax you but I don?t.
From what I could tell from the thin profile of the control rods on commercially made units they must have stapled the rods first and then, with the rods on their sides stapled through them into the louvers. I never had the chance to see the ?traditional? jig so I had to guess at how it was done.
I made my control rods a little thicker (~1/2?) and I stapled the louvers first. The jig would have been too complicated to do it the other way around. After the shutters and control rods were painted I marked the locations for the staples on the back-side of the control rods by pressing one into the painted finish with a pair of pliers. Then, with a small drill made from a wire nail smaller in diameter than the staple wire, I drilled a hole for each staple leg. With this done, I manually pressed each staple into the control rod through the corresponding louver staple with a pair of channel-lock pliers. I wrapped one jaw of the channel-locks with duct tape to keep it from marring the control rods.
It sounds like you have an exciting project on your hands with your house restoration.
Good luck, I hope this helped in some way.
Dean
Sorry, I sent this twice by mistake.
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