Ready? Okay. Good morning guys. We’re gonna do you a informational video here this morning. This is about J channels. J channel ’cause it looks like a J I’m not sure if you can. Is that a J from your direction? Yep. That’s a J.
So there’s your J channel. This is the trim. It goes around windows and doors. It accepts the vinyl siding in in here and it allows for some expansion and contraction. So once you put it in your siding, if it, it shrinks ’cause it’s minus 40. It’s not, it’s not gonna be completely exposed ’cause you got some play in there and you got your nail hem right here. You want to nail center of the slot on those guys.
So today I’m gonna show you specifically how you j out a window without using your measuring tape. Measuring tapes slows you down when you’re trying to go for speed. So this is the method and away we go. We got Levi running camera here today and he’s gonna be shouting some questions at me. Maybe he’s gonna challenge me. We’re gonna see if he says anything. I’m not sure anyways. Levi on camera. Let’s do this.
Okay, first step, take your J channel, get your ladder set in a location and you don’t have to move it. Less moving, the better. I’m gonna hold this J channel up on the edge of the window. I start on the bottom. I’m gonna run my J channel one J channel width past the edge of the window and hold it tight there. When you come around on this side, Evan, let it slip. You don’t wanna let it slip. You want a good grip with your left hand. You are gonna take your pencil and you’re gonna mark one J channel grip past this edge. So you’re past that end and you’re past this end.
So the bottom’s gotta be passed. Take out your greens, nip through the face, nip through the back. Now you’ve got a hinge point there. You just roll it around. Don’t cut right through ’cause it’s it’s holding in place there. Nicely, nicely. Now you got the top of the window done. Didn’t take all your tape measure at all. We’re all in by what? 20 seconds you’ve got top and bottom done. Okay, now you can cut this A guy. Now you got your top and bottom and set one aside.
On the bottoms here you’re gonna cut out the back of the j like that. It might be a little short. We’ll see. Same thing here. Starting on the back like that. And then like that there. That’s your bottom piece. That’s your bottom piece right there. Top piece is gonna be slightly different. So be the top. We don’t cut all of the back out on the top because the tops gonna stick past a little bit. Let’s, so, so we don’t want to see a big gap here. If we cut it right to the edge, we want it to be closed up there. So we’re gonna cut that about halfway through is all you need.
This one, those two right there. You always want your garbage. That means the waste material to go up when you’re cutting. You see I’ve got these shears. The, the, this side of the shear pushes up. So that’s way out. I wouldn’t come in this way ’cause ’cause it kind of messes it up. It be, it deforms it. The, when you’re pushing up in away, it deforms the siding that you’re cutting or the trim. So I don’t wanna do that to the piece I’m putting on the wall. That’s why I’m doing it this way.
Yeah.
Now I got the top piece. I got the bottom piece. That one can just sit there for now if it will. No, I’m gonna tuck it in there. Okay? Often do that with the js. Just let it sit in place. Okay, we’ve got the top, we’ve got the bottom. Now we’re gonna do the sides. It’s pretty well the same method once again. I’m gonna avoid my tape measure like the plague because it’s not necessary.
Okay, so what we’re gonna do here, go like that. I’m gonna go one J width past the bottom of the window there. Take my pencil and I’m gonna mark that at the top of the window. There we go. One mark. Gonna get it both sides. Now cut through the face, try and come straight across our midst so it bends nice like that. Now I know exactly the other side didn’t pull it or tape yet and I’m not going to. If you didn’t get that by now, tape slow you down.
So there we go. Now we got the sides. We’re doing a header style on this J channel. So this is the right side of our window. We don’t have to do anything with this one. The bottom side we’re gonna mire, we’re gonna mire in. And let’s see. It’s been a while. I’ve been off the tools for a bit. So let’s do this. Miter. Do you guys are, have you guys been making the tabs to cut ’em in?
What do you mean
Where you lock the miters together?
Mm yeah, you just have your tabs on the top and the top
On the bottom for water. We’re gonna keep it simple water. We’re gonna keep it simple in this one. I’m gonna go put a JI width like that. True. See once again my garbage is coming up so it’s getting warped, but it doesn’t matter ’cause that’s garbage. Now you see a lot of greenhorns and they’ll cut their Mitre. Oh, they want to be cabinet tree makers and professional carpenters. I’m gonna come right to the point. They’ll even get out a pencil and draw a line. Wasting time.
What you wanna do for the sake of the video, take out my pencil. You want to draw your, put your miter to a boat there and then there’s gonna be a good reason for this. You’ll soon see you nip there, there. That’s what you want. Now if we grab our bottom piece, which is fallen on me, is that the one? I’m not sure. Be that one. Maybe There. It’s over here.
So why you want to do that is if you go right to the right, to the perfect miter, sure it’ll look great. Now when it’s minus 30 and this one shrinks and the bottom one shrinks as they do, oh that’s gonna come apart. That mitter is gonna look terrible. Now I got this little bit of play here, I got just that little bit of play there where it can be there that’s tight and there that’s, that’s shrunk. See there’s movement there and it’s still not coming apart. Those other guys, their miters are going to be like wide open.
You always want to leave this piece here just like I did. The reason for that is that it shows like it’s solid in behind. You also see Greenhorns, homeowners, handyman and people who don’t really know what they’re doing, they’ll just cut this on a miter to a perfect point and they’ll cut this one on a miter to a perfect point. It’s so accurate to the 32nd of a degree. Then as soon as it gets to like minus five, the whole thing is wide open and you can see big gaps behind. So there we go. So we got the bottom,
We got the right side. Now we got the left side. So this gonna do the same trick with the left side. Once again, I don’t measure nothing. I’m not looking at nothing. I just kind of guide my greens up against that little tab on the inside that tells me where I wanna be. And your eye human eyeball is amazing at determining distances like eyeball. I bet you let’s, let’s for fun, let’s measure this thing here. I think I’m off a bit, but J Channel about just under an inch right there. Look at that one inch.
I defy you to get better than that using the tape measure. Not necessary. Okay, so we got that garbage coming up. Cut that one straight across. Cut this outta here. This one cut. Don’t matter really too much at all. It’s ugly, but who cares? It’s in behind. That’s it. That is it. So we got the right, we got the left, we got the top. Now we’re just gonna glue all this stuff together. We’d like to glue our J channels on just weatherproof, full weatherproof your window. We got Levi’s to put some good tape around this edge.
We’re going to glue all the J channels on as we do ’em. So it’s gonna be hidden in behind. You don’t want to have gobs of caulking all over your outside of your window. So you, you hide all that.
When we come to a renovation and we see rod, usually it’s around openings, windows and doors. That’s where the water gets in. You’re not gonna have water just leaking through the center of a wall. So that’s why we pay particular attention around windows and doors. Okay, that’s that all my pieces. I got my caulking. I use some product called Tremco eight 30 thermoplastic, elastomeric, glass and siding. Sealant. This is really good stuff. Do not use silicone. Make sure it’s an outdoor rated product.
And we’re gonna go ahead and start. Caulking gonna get under the window here. I’m gonna put this caulking there. You just want to get your tab there so you don’t keep shooting caulking Note everywhere at the bottom, the bottom. Push that right into that caulking. Gonna make a nice seal, eyeball it up looking pretty close. If it’s a little bit off, we can nip it. When we get up there, we’re gonna use inch and a half roofing nails. What’s what’s the rule on nailing this stuff, Levi? How often do you nail trims? Every 16. Nope, every 12, 8, 8 to 10 inches or 10 10 inches. Let’s say eight to 10 inches in
Siding is 16 inches. Trim is eight to 10. Or to be honest, it could be eight to 12. But we’re gonna, gonna do, we got about 10 inches there. There we go. One, now we’re gonna slide our ladder back into place so we can do all the remaining without moving our ladder. You wanna minimize movements, especially you guys are out there and doing vinyl siding by piece work.
You do not want to be taking your time. You’re gonna have to be efficient, bring everything you need. So once you get up that ladder, you got everything ready to go. You wanna be going up, down, and up and down repeatedly. So we’re gonna put a nice thick caterpillar there of some of this Tremco eight 30.
We use translucent often. It’s better than white. It’s it’s better than clear. Clear will often make you, if you’re trying to seal a gap so you don’t have a complete tight, tight surfaces that you’re caulking together. So you’re just kind of about like that. Say you’re, for whatever reason, you’ve got this gap to fill. If you use clear caulking, what happens is that clear caulking acts like a lens and it really makes that gap look bigger.
So yeah, translucent is the better product because it kind of takes on the color of the materials around it. So it’s not, it’s not acting like a lens. Okay, I’m gonna go like that. Like that and then that fits just like so pop in a couple nails and that’s it. You get the picture from there. We’re gonna shut off the video at this point unless Levi have any questions, any of this here?
Nothing comes to mind. No, no. Nothing but facts. Just all facts right on this. What I’d like to hear. Okay guys, thanks for watching. Make sure and like, and subscribe to our YouTube channel and look forward to seeing you in the future. Send any questions you got in the comments and we’ll be happy to answer ’em.