I’ve lately had to slow down on the house and spend more time on my day job – to financially catch up from the early remodeling splurges. (Like having the tree guys go crazy with their chain saws.)

But this afternoon, a big box with my only recent purchase came in the mail.  It’s an inexpensive Hitachi router that, on a price:specs ratio is a very good value.  Let’s hope it holds up.

The router is to make battens for both the exterior (where they need replacing) and the interior walls that I intend to leave as simple boards. I unpacked the router and, surprisingly, I was able to make a fairly accurate copy of the battens on the house after about an hour tinkering.

While that was encouraging, the process is not without its problems.  First, my copy battens are about 1/4 inch narrower and 1/8 inch thicker than the originals. The main curve is also not quite as long. It seems like the differences mainly have to do with the starting size of the board before its fed through the router.

In terms of size, however, the copies I made today are within my tolerances. Once they are up and the wood finished, it would take a very sharp eye to see the difference. (UPDATE: I found a router bit online that I think may be a better match. It’s a calculated risk – it’s not cheap – but I’m going to order the bit and try it out before I commit to this one.)

But I have a couple of problems I have yet to figure out.

My copy battens have been made (so far) from new nominal 1×4 boards. Although my router bit has the same angles as the original, since the original battens were made from slightly narrower boards (perhaps true 1/2 inch lumber?), there is a little lip left on the edge of the new boards after they pass through the router.  To match the old curve, this lip must be cut off. Fortunately, it is thin enough to be removed with a utility knife (at least with new wood) and then touched with a sander to smooth it out. (UPDATE: Hopefully, the new router bit will take care of this problem for me.)

What that means is that it’s a fairly complicated process.  Each side of the board has to be passed through the router, then the lip has to be sliced from both sides, and then the edges sanded.  It’s a bit tedious; but I think I will do it because it yields a pretty close match to the originals. In fact, if I was ever able to find starting boards that were 1/4 inch wider, it would be a practically perfect match. (The only difference would be that the new ones would be about 1/8 inch thicker.)

The other problem is that appearance and grain of the new boards does not match that of the old wood in the house. Since I will be staining the exterior with a semi-transparent greyish stain, for the replacements used on the outide, I hope that I can use new wood and, by slightly manipulating the stain and seal technique, make it look nearly identical to to the old wood.

On the inside, it is a bit more difficult.  I have old wood, which I would like to keep bare; but that needs battens.  A neighbor suggested, and I initially thought, that I could use the baseboards I’ve peeled off the walls to make battens.  This wouldn’t be too big a deal because the baseboards in the rooms will be painted, and new and old painted wood look alike.  So, in that case, I could have just bought new wood for the baseboards.

On further thought, however, that isn’t a very good idea, because of the baseboard dimensions (about 1×6), which aren’t wide enough to produce more than one batten each .  So, if I used the baseboards, I would probably wind up discarding nearly half of my old pine. Not very efficient use of a valuable resource. (Second thought:  Well, maybe if I just made the inside battens narrower – starting by ripping the 1x6s into 1x3s … the battens would be noticeably different than the exterior; but is that necessarily bad?)

I haven’t figured out what to do about the inside yet. I need some old pine; but of starting dimensions closer to the batten size.

For the outside, I plan to buy test quantities of some stains and finish products and try to get a match (or something close) between new battens and old boards. Once I’ve got a system, then there’s nothing stopping me from manufacturing the battens and fixing up the house exterior. That will take a few weeks’ work; but it will make a huge difference in how the property looks.