The yard / Yard work / Glossary
Trade glossary - painted on the sign board
Words, defined the way they get said at the gate
Twenty-two words, grouped the way the bins are grouped. Definitions are short and concrete on purpose: a glossary that needs a second glossary is no use to somebody standing in front of a rack of sash with a tape measure in one hand.
Group one
Around an opening
Door and window frames, and the parts of them that get blamed when something does not shut.
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Jamb
The upright sides of a door or window frame. The hinge side carries the load; the latch side carries the abuse.
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Head jamb
The top piece of the frame. Where a house that has settled shows first, and where a door starts to bind.
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Sill
The bottom horizontal member of a window frame, sloped to shed water. The part that rots, always, and rots from the end grain in.
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Threshold
The piece you step on at a doorway. Not the sill, though plenty of people call it that and everybody knows what they mean.
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Stile
The vertical edge members of a door or sash. The hinge stile and the lock stile, and the reason a door is handed.
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Rail
The horizontal members of a door or sash: top rail, bottom rail, and the lock rail where the hardware goes.
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Mullion
The upright post between two openings, or between two sash in a window wall. Structural, and heavier than people expect.
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Muntin
The thin bar dividing the lites inside one sash. Not a mullion. Say it wrong at the gate and you will hear about it.
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Reveal
How much jamb or door is left showing once the trim goes on. Also the moment a stripped door stops looking ruined.
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Stop
The thin strip a door or sash closes against. Salvage stops are worth keeping with the frame they came from; they never fit another one.
Handed. A door is described by which side the hinges are on when you face it from the side it swings toward. Get that wrong and a salvaged door becomes a very expensive piece of art.
Group two
Wood, and what has happened to it
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Heart pine
Old-growth longleaf pine: tight rings, resinous, hard on blades. Flooring from it usually outlives the building it came out of.
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Quarter-sawn
Board cut so the growth rings run close to perpendicular to the face. Moves less in a Texas summer, and shows that flaky figure people like.
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Check
A crack along the grain, usually at the end of a beam where it dried fastest. A check is not a failure; a check that runs through the middle of a span is a conversation.
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Dutchman
A small piece of matching wood let into a damaged spot, grain running the same way. The honest repair, and the one that lasts.
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Salvage grade
This yard's own wording, not a standard: sound, marked, usable as-is. Anything needing millwork gets said out loud, never graded up.
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Banding
Steel strapping around a bundle of flooring so it stays a bundle. Flooring that comes off a band before it is on the truck becomes a jigsaw.
Group three
Glass and glazing
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Lite
One piece of glass in a sash or door, and the opening it sits in. Six-lite means six panes and usually one that cracked last winter.
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True divided lite
Each pane a separate piece of glass in its own opening, not one big sheet with bars glued to the outside of it.
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Rebate
The stepped lip in a sash or frame that the glass sits in. Also written rabbet. Clean it to bare wood or the new putty will not hold.
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Glazing bar
The bar holding the lites in a sash, including the one running to the meeting rail. The part that rots first, every time.
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Putty
Glazing compound. Old putty gone to chalk lifts out clean; old putty that stayed soft is the one that fights you for an hour.
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Back putty
The thin bed of compound behind the glass, in the rebate, before the pane goes in. Skipped by amateurs, and by people in a hurry.
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Glazing point
The small metal tab that holds the pane while the compound cures. Set flat, not deep - deep points crack glass from the edge inward.
Read before you glaze
The sash guide
Nine steps for putting glass back into a wood sash, including the four minutes with linseed oil that everybody skips.
Group four
Water, and keeping it outside
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Flashing
Metal or membrane that sends water back out where two surfaces meet. Salvage flashing is only worth keeping if it is not creased.
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Drip cap
The small sloped strip over a window or door head that throws water clear of the frame instead of down behind it.
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Chalking
Old paint going to powder at the surface. On a sash it means the film has failed and the wood underneath has been getting wet for years.
Group five
Words that only mean something in this yard
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Bin
A rack, shelf or corner of the yard holding one kind of material, with a number painted on a tag. B-04 is doors, B-07 is glass, B-09 is beams.
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Lot
One arrival, written down as one entry in the ledger, with its own number. A lot can fill three bins or a single shelf.
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Provenance note
Where a lot came from and what was true of it. Where the paperwork ran out, the note says it is a guess and marks it as one.
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Donor
A door, sash or length of trim kept for parts rather than for use. A donor sash can save a good one, which is why the yard keeps them.
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Match request
A sample brought to the gate and an afternoon spent walking the shelves bin by bin for something that belongs next to it.
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Call before you load
Not a slogan. A bin that held forty doors on Tuesday can hold twelve on Friday, and the yard would rather say so on the telephone.
Missing a word
The board has room
Send the term you could not find and where you ran into it. Words get painted on the board on Fridays, in stencil like the rest.
Builders Surplus, Inc.
A word is easier than a wasted trip
If a tag in the yard uses a word that is not here, telephone and ask. Explaining it once at the gate beats explaining it over the noise of a truck.