IRON WINDOWS

We - and many other Danes - have lots of iron "stall windows" in the barn (see below). The frames are made of cast-iron, and the individual glass panes are fixed to the iron with putty.

I have a mini-project going, where I renovate the windows in the barn so that they look like the renovated ones in the middle building on the right. The frames themselves last for ever. However, the putty dries out over time, and eventually crumbles, making the panes loose. And some of those are anyway cracked or broken. So I will knock out the putty, throw away the glass, paint the frames with a metallic paint, and then put new glass in, using a clear silicate gel instead of the white putty.

This will admittedly take me some time, not least because I have to do about fifteen windows, and each one has a dozen panes or more. But that's the point of having a project, you can do it in stages.

Walter Blotscher