I plan to make some interior plantation-type shutters with 3″ adjustable wood louvres. The center vertical adjusting bar is usually attached to the louvres with small U-shaped pins – one on the louvre and one on the adjusting bar. Does anyone know if there is a special tool available to install these U-shaped pins and if so, where can it be purchased?
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Well, er, um, I just came up from the shop for coffee and calvin had e mailed me this, so I guess I should respond to it...let's see, I've built plenty of fixed louver shutters over the years, piece of cake. I even built some really cool Japaneeze looking landscape lights with hip cedar roofs and adjustable louver shutters to adjust the direction of the light, but I've never built shutters with adjustable louvers.
That being said, a couple years ago this question came up and right after that discussion I ran across "shutter pins", and other traditional shutter hardware, in one catalog or another...maybe "Restoration Hardware"? I'll try to dig around this evening and see if I can find it. In the meantime, I'm sure someone here will be able to help you out.
3" louvers seems kinda wide though. How big are these shutters?
Coffee's done, gotta run.
I used to run a shutter shop. in a smallish setup , you need: 1) a dedicated staple gun to shoot the staple into the louver....this involves a custom made v-shaped attachment to center the gun on the louver (2 3/8" is called california, 3" is Plantation), and it still often goes wrong and you blow a staple out the side.
You also need a dedicated setup to shoot the staple into the bar...ours was an aluminum jig (all this stuff is custom made/machined....never seen a commercial version) that had a second stapler blocked up a certain height, and a channel that the bar ran in, upside down, to position it properly....everyhting is laid out, and you take the pre-stapled louvers, align it with the bar, where the staple is gonna go....and fire. Sometimes you miss. This takes skill. With all the other weird things you have to do, like centre drilling the louvers fr the shutter pins, routing the space in the rails for the bar, learning to sparay paint an operable shutter.....IMO, it's a waste of time to consider making them, unless you're investing in a business. And if it's a business, look at how some of the bigger companies, like O'Hare in Texas are doing it....CNC, etc.
Lots more to shutters than first appears.
cabinetmaker/college instructor. Cape Breton, N.S
Adrian is on the right track. You have to jig up for it. We used a Senco stapler with a nose piece special built to ensure a constant depth of staple.
Adrian is right. Building shutters with moveable louvers is a time-consuming process and uses more lumber than you would ever imagine. I know. I built 32 of them for my own home. When neighbors ask if I will build some for them I direct them to advertising in Old House Journal. There is no way I could build them cheaper than these manufacturers.
That said, if your committed to building them yourself, I found two articles to be very helpfull: one in FHB and the other in FWW. Both appeared in the 1980s. Regarding your specific question, I used an Arrow staple gun to attach the staples to the bar. This is a special staple gun which uses rounded staples. I think this type of gun is generally used to attach small wires but you can find it at most hardware stores for about $15. Then, I used very small eyes (as in hook and eyes) attached to the center of each louver. Opening up the eyes slightly you can connect the staples on the bar to the louvers. Mind you, I did say it was a time-consuming process! I just found that using the staple gun on both bar and louvers was destroying too many of each. Good luck.
I dug around for quite a while yesterday to no avail. I DID find some cool catalogs I forgot I had though! I'll keep looking. I know I've seen this hardware advertised.
Adrian, do you remember where you got your louver pins and such?
Nope....someone else took care of buying them....we bought them in large quantities, from different sources. Same with the hinges, and we had to look hard for a nice, hard, but not brittle yellow screw for the hinges. The ones we settled on were zinc, I think, and really tough.
If anyone is set on making them, look for a mill that supplies shutter companies; the louvers, bars, stiles, and rails in different widths are all stock items....just order in the number of ten or twelve footers you need. If you have to mill the wood, too, on top of jigging up for a one off set of shutters, I can save you some time....just send me a cheque for all the money you have. You get to the same place in the end, but my way is quicker.cabinetmaker/college instructor. Cape Breton, N.S
How's the teaching going? Coming to the end of the school year, or do you guys have a schedule different from ours here in the States?
I've got about a month before they go out on work experience....then they graduate. I still have much shaping, moulding etc. to do. It's pretty intense right now. I wish we could just do a mind meld/data dump thing.
How about yourself? Still subbing?cabinetmaker/college instructor. Cape Breton, N.S
Interesting Adrian. A couple of years ago, maybe three, I was asked to look at and estimate the manufacturing cost of some external shutters. They were to replace dilapidated, lost, broken, etc., originals on an historical house, and one of the stipulations were that they had to be as near an exact match to the original pattern as possible. The joinery was all through wedged M&T, scribed at the shoulders to a non-standard moulding. The slats were a non standard size too, and I'd have had to source some sort of suitable pine-- I don't recall which one now. Then there was the problem of the hardware, and the tools you described to shoot it just so. So bear in mind that this-- for me-- was a one-off job, and I wouldn't be making historically accurate shutters again that I knew of, so all costs would have to borne by the profit generated in this job, and maybe sit back in amazement at my proposed charges
All in all, I seem to remember my proposed charge was in the region of US $1,300 to $1,500 a shutter, including delivery and installation-- I don't feel like going through my records for the exact figure. I excluded painting from the price as they planned to use their own painter with some historically acceptable paint-- I can't imagine there being much lead in it though. Anyway, there were 22 shutters I think, so a bit of quick arithmetic comes up with a minimum sum of $28,600, and possibly $33,000.
The historical society clutched their chests, spat out the dummy, and just about all collectively fell out of their pram. That's when I discovered that they'd budgeted just $5,000 for the shutters. After about three days work sourcing materials and tools, etc., etc., I wished I'd asked what the budget was prior to wasting my time. Another lesson learned. I always ask those unaskable questions now. And the last time I went past the house, it still had no shutters on it. <g> Slainte, RJ.
Do I work really hard, or do I hardly really work?
Edited 3/30/2002 1:27:47 PM ET by Sgian Dubh
Seems like, for the occasional shutter, you could come up with a method like - hold a tapered dowel perpendicular to the louver in just the right spot, then staple directly over the dowel, then slide the dowel out, leaving the required loop in the staple - or something like that. I don't know, might work.
Adrian - haven't subbed since that first week. Found myself itching to get back to work. And really, I don't miss it. Just not cut out for it, I guess.