Finished Fan. Photo by Brian Cox
On Friday, East Derry First Parish Church will be hosting a celebration in honor of the 300th anniversary of Nutfield, a Scotch-Irish settlement that was the precursor to today’s Derry, Londonderry, and Manchester, NH. The crew at East Derry has been hustling to finish the belfry in preparation for the event. For a bunch of timber framers, they’ve been doing an awful lot of finish work. A more accurate name for Preservation Timber Framing would include an “and”, but the name’s long enough already.
Belfry Trim, Labeled. Photo and labelling by Brian Cox
The crew was able to preserve some of the ample belfry and lantern trim, including the eight turned columns on the upper lantern. What they couldn’t restore, they reproduced. Every week, Brian creates a photo report to keep the building committee up to date, breaking this behemoth phase into bite-size pieces. It also serves as a documentary record of repair and this basis of this blog post. Between the mutules and the guttae (the swiss cheese and the sawtooths), I’ve been inspired by both the mass production and the attention to detail.
Tom fastening slats. Photo by Brian Cox
In between enormous timbers and acres of primed trim, Tom has been quietly reproducing four of the arched fans at the top of the lower lantern louvers. In carpentry, fans are kind of a thing. Their arched tops require a choice between multiple joints, or extensive short grain. In the photo above, you can see that the curve of the arched top was cut out of two wide pine boards, their long grain oriented 45 degrees to the bottom rail. The fan’s slats are precisely twisted. This delicate assembly is then mounted to the side of the lantern and exposed to strafing wind, sun, rain and snow at the top of a hundred foot tower.
Original Fan and MDF Template. Template by Tom Glynn, Photo by Brian Cox
Four of the fans were in good shape, and required “cosmetic” repairs, glueing and re-fastening. Four needed to be replaced completely. Tom started by transferring the measurements from one of the original fans to a sheet of MDF, creating a full size drawing. He used this template to begin cutting pieces from 2″ thick Eastern White Pine.
Fan core, with blade angles laid out. Photo by Brian Cox
Tom cut templates from luan on the bandsaw, and traced them out on the pine. He used the bandsaw to cut out his pieces and then laid out the dadoes carefully in pencil, copying the angles from the original fan. He used a dovetail saw and 1/4″ chisel to clean out each groove.
Those dadoes are cut! Handiwork by Tom Glynn. Photo by Brian Cox
Each fan blade is 3/16″ thick and was gently twisted as it was installed in its frame. The twist is created and held by the angled dadoes. The angle on the half round core is different than the exterior arch. At the core, the blade is more perpendicular to the face of the fan, which allows all the blades to fit, and gives the appearance that the rays are opening up like a sunburst.
Fan blades. Photo by Brian Cox
Fortunately, Tom was able to copy the angles from the original fan blades, rather than calculate the angles from scratch. A lot of folks think it’s easiest to scrap the old and start anew. On a piece like this, we were grateful to retain the knowledge of the old-timers from the evidence left in the original pieces.
Half-finished. Photo by Brian Cox
Once the fans were finished, they were primed with two coats of California alkyd primer and two more coats of California latex paint. Commonly, fans are decorative, which means that they were not always used for ventilation, and were applied over solid sheathing as was the case here.
Fan fit with arched trim. Photo by Brian Cox
Still, each exterior element needs to shed water to protect the elements behind it. Each fan was fit with arched trim. The flush board trim projects 2″, while the frame and blades of the fan are only 1 3/4″ in thickness. This will protect the fan from wind driven rain running down the face of the flush board siding. Each vertical joint is backed with a spacer batten to prevent water from getting between the boards and penetrating into the frame.
Louvers, Columns and Fans, installed. Photo by Brian Cox
With every detail in this tower, the crew considered the path of rain water. We use tight fitting joints and carefully considered flashing details to keep water out, rather than caulking. Caulk is an important tool to stabilize deterioration and prevent further rot. Ultimately, though, it is a band-aid, which is promised to last 20 years, and starts to shrink and fail in the first season. This is why PTF goes beyond the frame and performs finish work. We work on buildings that have commonly withstood 200 years, and we want our repairs to last 200 more. When the bottom of the structure begins 60 feet from the ground, we know that the caulking won’t be re-applied every five years, and the building will be lucky if it gets repainted every twenty. Protecting the frame starts with the finish, and our trim is not only beautiful, it is functional.
We love to share our work in person. We hope to see you at the Nutfield celebration this weekend!
