Window Repair Help
 

I know there are a few guys who can help me out with this:

I have an old vertical sliding window with a cracked pane of glass. What is the easiest way to remove the old putty and put the new glass in?

Do I just chisel the putty out? Or should I heat it up somehow? Should I pull the window out or do it in place?

Chip/pry it out in place (might be a PITA to pull the window out) and watch out for little metal tabs under the putty that are used to hold the glass in place (kind of triangle shaped that are tapped into place)

called glazier points they are. If the window is old the heat will make it break easier.

968rz has nailed it.

The old putty (or, in my case, carefully manufactured hand-made wooden trip pieces) come out with a chisel. Carefully. Watch for the glazier's points, those little bits of metal that hold the old trim/putty in place. If it's putty, there'll be no points, and heat (see below) will make it softer.

The new pane of glass may need to be custom-modified. In my case, the pane was square, but the hole it needed to fit into was not. Old houses, you know? We found that a belt sander was an excellent way to make _small_ modifications the shape of a piece of glass.

The new putty needs to be rolled in your hands until pretty warm, then carefully pressed into place. Heat makes the putty soft, and as it cools it'll harden. So do this before it gets genuinely cold outside.

Good luck.

Dan

Might be too late for 'warm weather'. This weekend I guess....

Glazing putty works fine in cold weather as long as it's 70* itself. Just put the can of putty in a warm spot a couple of hours before use. Warm, not hot.

You can locally heat the old hard putty with a BBQ starter, the kind made out of an oven rod. If you don't have one of those, maybe you have an old style soldering iron. Open flame is too hot and spoils all the nearby paint.

Also, if you are using an open flame and get it too hot, the glass can crack and you will have glass splinters do deal with. So be prepared and wear gloves and glasses.

Buy a MAC! You wouldn't have problem with your window if you owned a Mac!!!

Oh, wait...! ;)

Randy

Hey, that is what I was going to say! ;)