Wood Window Joinery With A Nine Year Old

Turns out that taking your nine year old (Kolten) to the shop to help with making wood windows is a lot of fun! Being in the middle of a sash build for a project set the stage for a fun learning experience. I gave him the camera and let him film the lessons. He did a great job. Here's some of what we learned:

• Window Terminology. It's important to know the names of what we're making, so we learned about stiles, rails and muntins. We also learned about the joinery terms mortise and tenon.

• Joinery. We learned that stiles, rails and muntins connect to one another by using different sized mortises and tenons. We then worked together on the machines to make them.

• The Hollow Chisel Mortiser. I introduced Kolten to this machine that makes square holes in a precise way by aligning layout marks and pulling on a handle. I aligned the marks and he pulled the handle for an entire set of sashes.

• The Sash Factory. Kolten helped me run the window parts through this machine that cuts profiles and rabbets into the window parts.

• The Band Saw. Some of the window parts we make have tenons that are shortened by cutting them on a band saw. We cut these together.

Since we learned so much together and captured it on video, sharing it with you was the obvious thing to do. I hope you enjoy it and learn as much as we did.