Hi all,
So I’ve got small deck project coming up in a few months as part of a larger house remodel.
The architect that the HO was working with had drawn in a kind of kooky layout that didn’t take into account where the fence and gate are. It also was poured concrete with iron railings, while the homeowner is much more of a wood appreciator.
So I’m redesigning the deck, looking at using Ipe or another hardwood. She’s jazzed about it. Rather than building the deck as a half-hexagon by clipping the corners, I think a curved front would be perfect for her location.
The question is what the best way to build the top rail would be. I’ve done a lot of bent laminations for other work but I wasn’t sure what would look best for the top rail. It will be 5/4″ by 6″ flat going the whole way around. So I think mitering together small sections and then cutting the appropriate arc would be hard to do since it’s pretty scarce around here to find anything wider than 6″.
I’ve had some *fun* issues in the past gluing up Ipe, but I’m now pretty confident in 2-part epoxy holding up to the job.
It’s a fairly wide radius, I haven’t figured it out exactly, but I’m assuming the arc will extend roughly 2 feet out over 8′ or 9′ width.
It seems like the best way to do it would be to find 2 closely matched pieces, rip them down to 1/4″ or 3/8″ pieces since it’s a shallow arc, glue them up nice and tidy, and then pop them down to the millwork shop to sand them down. (I’ll have them sand down the other straight railing pieces to match thickness at the same time.)
I just haven’t personally seen a laminated Ipe top railing so I’m wanting to make sure that it’s the best way to go, or if someone has done something better/smarter.
Thanks
Paul
Replies
Any takers?
I think you are on the right track with epoxy lams. You'll have to test a couple rips to see how thin you need to slice them, and find a method that works for you to keep them all organized for grain matching.
BTW, a 9'length with a 2' deflection gives you about a 7'8.5" radius.
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Thanks Piffin,I'm not sure how thin I'll need to get with those pieces either. That's why I'm glad it'll be a pretty shallow arc (7'8.5" to be exact, thank you sir...)Should be a great looking little deck in the end, and she's one of my favorite clients as well, so I'm looking forward to testing it out and getting it just right.Paul
Edited 1/26/2009 12:01 am ET by hipaul
It is hard to work with, but you show you already know the wood. Nice stuff and good recycling efforts.These stair treads were oak. The larger radii were lamed with 3/8" strips, but I had to get down to a hair under 1/4" for the top one as the radius got tighter.The railing was made over ten years ago ( in need of new paint job now) with red cedar ripped to 3/8" also, but that radius is tighter than yours too.
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Great looking work.
I've been working with straight lines for so long that I'm really chomping to do more curved work. It's the challenge of it all that keeps me looking forward to each new job.I do a lot of work on Craftsman style homes and some Capes and such, but I'm really on the lookout to do something just like the entry you showed in that last picture. Some of the older Colonial style homes in the hills here have some really grand entries like that, some with the curved portion of the entry deck covered by another roof. (I'm not sure of the correct architectural terms for all of them). Lots of curved portions, good details, great proportions.I'm sure if I find one of those I'll be asking lots more questions!Paul
Palladian
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Piffin,Tapping you too to take a look at the pics above as well.
The radius ended up being 6' on the railing. I was able to get the Ipe ripped to 1/4" and have it bend pretty well.
I think for the future I might go down to 3/16" or even 1/8" just to have less force wanting to pull those apart. But they bent nicely and there was absolutely zero springback when I unclamped them. That was a great surprise since I hadn't calculated in any room for it.Certainly was a pretty fun challenge. And that curve came out just right!Paul
Very nice looking job !!
I love it.And I'm jealous of your clamp collection!
;)
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Thanks Piffin, I'm glad somebody is jealous of my clamp collection!I figure now it all makes sense why every time I asked myself what in the H... E... double hockey sticks was I doing plunking down anywhere from $25 to $50 for each of those Bessey clamps. Since I don't want to drive a tricked out giant behemoth truck, I had to find a way to make the "guys" jealous somehow!!Paul
Beautifully crafted work. Thanks for sharing the pics. I have a similar radiused railing Juliet balcony project in the works, but instead of Cedar or Ipe client desires a composite. Specifically, Trex. Can't afford, nor justify the cost of the Heatcon heat blanket system for bending composites for this one-time job, but I wonder what people think of laminating strips of Trex?
Don't know how I'd feel about that...heard that Trex doesn't take glue very well, but I don't have any experience myself. I don't like the look now of the couple of Trex decks I built a few years ago so I'm kind of biased against it as a material. Here's a link though that popped up from a quick online search for gluing up trex:https://www.finehomebuilding.com/how-to/articles/building-a-curved-deck-with-synthetic-decking.aspxPaul
http://www.pauljohnsoncarpentry.com
Thanks for the feedback hipaul. I'll put it in the hopper of things to consider.
Nice work. That deck is better than the house from what I can see!Jake Gulick
[email protected]
CarriageHouse Design
Black Rock, CT
Not for long!!!(I mean the house will be getting better, not the deck getting worse ;-)
very nice work! This is the first I ran across this thread.
Stan
Thanks Stan,That's a great compliment coming from the "King of Curves". (You may trademark that if you haven't already! ;-)Someday I will be ready and rarin' to tackle something helical. For now I'm happy to be working with the straightforward curves. And it's nice to be polishing up my math skills again.Paul
Paul- I am a natural at curves....I cant build anything straight!
More truth to that than I care to admit.
Stan
Exemplary work on the deck, it gives many the hope that someday they too will be able to own such beautiful clamps. (and put them to use in such a loving way). In response to the Trex question heat is the way to move. Call heatcon, I know in my area there is someone that does some fabricating work and has several blanket systems. Yes they are around a thousand or so, but what nice toys they would be.....
Have you bent IPE before?
I have & it's a PITA.
I had to kerf cut a 1x4 to get about a 15' radius for an oval outdoor bar top.
8' radius, I wouldn't expect anything thicker than 3/8 will bend without snapping.
Like Piff says do some trials, & let us know.
I'm a fan of bent laminations.
I haven't bent any Ipe before. I've played around with small cutoffs just to see how brittle they are but never glued it into any form. I also like bent laminations a lot, especially since I don't have a bandsaw or a vacuum press.I also really like working with Ipe even though it's such a hard (and hard on tools and lungs) wood. Definitely challenging. I built some countertops out of Ipe (pic below) and when I routed out the waste from the sink cutout I can honestly say that I only remember a handful of times being so tense and shaky. My router hit interlocked grain a few times and I still am amazed that it didn't break the router or some part of me. I remember growling at the homeowner to stay away while I was doing that because he was a really nice and very interested guy so he was always watching what was going on. I had to stop and collect myself a couple times after having the router hit and wrench away. I chipped a huge piece off of the back of the cutout right where your eye will always be looking, but was able to cut a little more away since it was right at the meeting of the two sink bowls and fill the rest of the void with wood dust and glue. I slept really, really well that night.Here's the last couple of things I built with Ipe that weren't decks or outdoor pieces:One of a series of countertops:
Kitchen island, solid ipe bottom, reclaimed maple flooring top
Fir and Ipe small entry bookcase. That's old framing lumber for the fir, and the ipe is the cutout from the drop in range from the ipe countertops.I'll let you know how the bending goesPaul
Beautifull work!!!!!!!!!
Real pretty work. And YUP you can do it, I'd venture to say you need to get down to 5/16. Ipe is stiff as teenager in a nudie bar.
Seeing Piff's stair treads, got me thinking..how about a cross over approach. do your bent lams in segments like a mitered and sawn out. Makes it easier to rip somewhat shorter pcs vs the whole length at one go. I'd rout for splines at the joints and maybe pocket screw from below as well.
When ripping the lams. Mark a large VEE across one face of the board and it helps greatly in getting them back in order for glueing up.Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
Repairs, Remodeling, Restorations
They kill Prophets, for Profits.
Hmmm.....not a bad idea on the hybrid approach.
I think I might go for the long full pieces on this one only because I'd like to minimize joints as much as possible having just had to deal with ipe joints opening up and I haven't started to think about the railing details yet and whether there will be a sub-top rail to support the top rail.I am also a mighty fan of the big vee across the boards; I think I started doing that after about the third or fourth time of saying to myself, "no, I don't need to mark them, I'll just keep them in order, and this time I WON'T knock the pile over..."Paul
It was just a thought, I didn't recall the overall length. The pocket screws really pull stuff up tight as a clamp for odd angles. I'm a convert from dovetails (G)Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
Repairs, Remodeling, Restorations
They kill Prophets, for Profits.
Plumbbill,Posted a few pics in the message above so you could check and see how it turned out. I was pretty happy, and the homeowner loves it. She doesn't want it to be outside because she thinks it looks like a piece of furniture!Paul
All I can say is WOW.
Nicely done.
Very nice. that is a piece of furniture.
Excellent work.
Thank you for sharing.
Chuck Slive, work, build, ...better with wood
We have made several curved ipe piecies for stair treads and railings. The tightest was a four foot radius. Ripped the ipe to 3/16" strips and used gorilla glue-lots of gorilla glue. I set up a form on a work bench (white melamie bench top-cleans up real easy) and put wax paper on the bench top.
One trick I have learned is to glue with the top facing down. If there are voids between your laminations, the glue flows down and instead of foaming, and dries in a solid form and is very difficult to differentiate from the actual Ipe itself. Use lots of glue and do wet every piece.
If you can make you laminations one piece that would be best. Making the joints tight is a pain. You could probably do this with two people, but four would be better.
I'll see if I can find some pics
Bruce
Edited 1/26/2009 8:17 am by Hiker
some good technique there.
i haven't been ready to trust Gorilla for curved lam work yet. Have you been back to see any of it after some time and stress to see how it's holding?
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It seems to be holding up fine. We did a curved cedar railing that is about 4 yrs old now and not a single area where the poly glue has not worked well.
It is really nice to work with as the open time allows for lots of handling. Obviously it is more work on the cleanup side, but the foam over stuff cleans up real easy.
No failures yet.
Bruce
Thanks for the tip on the upside down gluing...hadn't thought of that, and that's the one thing I was thinking about with the ipe, since it's so prone to chipping tiny little pieces out even with a good blade on the tablesaw.I'm staying away from Poly glue and ipe for now though. I've had some problems with gorilla glue and joint failures on ipe, also tight bond III and ipe. Granted this was with 5/4" x 6" and 5/4" x 4" pieces glued up width wise so there's lots of movement happening across the grain. I'm sure in a lamination with such big glue surfaces and such narrow strips, there's not much movement that the small pieces of wood can do individually. But for now I'm sticking with epoxy so I won't stay up late every night worrying about the joints.As to the 2 vs. 4 people, I'm a one man show so I look forward to the challenges of how to do something that should be impossible for one guy to do, unless it wastes a bunch of time or money; but it sure helps keep me sane.Paul
Just following up with you all. Thanks for the tip on flipping the laminated piece upside down for gluing: worked like a charm.I ended up using some system-3 epoxy because I'd had issues with Ipe and poly glue before.The radius ended up being 6' for the deck. Each of the parts (top rail, sub rails, front rail, ect.) had a slightly different radius so I used pieces of plywood, cut the different radii on them, and then cut out some clamp holes following the curve so I'd get nice even pressure.Took me about 45 min - 1hr per board (roughly 20 1/4" pieces per ) to slather on the epoxy, and then clamp it in order along the form.Messy work but it came out great. Fortunately the pieces were only about 10' long total so working by myself was no problem.For the skirt I had my local millwork shop bandsaw the Ipe to just shy of 1/4" and then I bent and screwed that down over the curved frame front of the deck. I used 1/4" ply to fair the curve of the framing lumber before attaching the front.I was a little nervous as to how those laminations will hold up over the years so I ran a few screws through them across the width so that even if the joints open up a bit, none will try to spring away. I know it could be doing more harm than good since the screws will try and hold the wood at one point while it's trying to contract or expand, but I really didn;t want to think about 1 piece ever popping off the inside or outside!We'll see if I have any allotment to post these pics. I think it turned out beautifully so I'm willing to blow it all on this one!Paulhttp://www.pauljohnsoncarpentry.com
Wow! That looks great. Nice job. I'm curious, what's the function of it since there's no door from the house to the deck.
Runnerguy
Ah there's the million dollar question Runner,I actually took out that window this week and put in a new door. This deck is part of a larger mudroom/basement/kitchen remodel; I just decided to go ahead and do the deck first so that she had some instant gratification.She works at home most of the time so now while I'm banging away in the house she can be out on the deck sipping something cool. And all I had to do was be really, really, really, really careful that I didn't drop part of the wall on the deck when I cut it out!Paul
I am glad it worked out for you.
Bruce
That's some beautiful work.Hope the homeowner is particular about maintenance. Project like that deserves to be kept looking like it does nowkudosBing
i did a 14' radius in teak bunch of years ago...we used 3/16 x 2" rips and West system
but yours is purtier....
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much purtier...
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Mike Hussein Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
Edited 7/3/2009 12:49 pm ET by MikeSmith
Nicely done, you might be able to make a living at it LOLhttp://www.tvwsolar.com
We'll have a kid
Or maybe we'll rent one
He's got to be straight
We don't want a bent one
He'll drink his baby brew
From a big brass cup
Someday he may be president
If things loosen up
I'd let you build my deck. Great job, thks for sharing the pics.
Brad
that's impressive...
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming<!----><!----><!---->
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Forget the primal scream, just ROAR!!!
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beautiful!
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pictures like this are why I come here!View Image
I'm with you Huck,This is exactly why I come here as well....I think just about all of us are here because we like and care about what we're doing and want to improve at every turn.I've been thrilled to get great advice and tips from all the people here and see how someone else does something, even if I think I know how to do it already. There's always going to be a different way to do it. That's why I like to take a lot of during photos as well as after photos. I love the look of the finished deck, but I was mostly excited to be doing something that took a lot of thought, attention, and cajones. Looking at that photo I can see some years of hard earned experience, some good creative thinking, a bunch of great tips from people more experienced than me, and the joy of "going for it!".And it's a great thing to have clients that are willing to pay to have things done well.
The Homeowner sent me an email over this last weekend saying she looked out the window and was stunned at how beautiful the deck was. I emailed her back (and told here when I was back there that Monday) how happy I was to work with someone who appreciates beauty enough to know the value of it. Paul
Very nice Paul! What sort of finish did you use?
Thanks Sunsen,At this point I'm a Penofin man. I still haven't found the "perfect" outdoor finish and don't actually think there is such a thing, especially for Ipe, but Penofin looks great, is easy to apply and easy to recoat which are the things that I think give it the most chance to stay looking good for as long as possible. The wood still has some moisture in it, and those curved pieces were sanded down right before installation, so I'm going to recoat the deck when I finish the rest of the project there in a month or two. That should hopefully get it set for the next year and then we can see about more finish next summer.Paul
http://www.pauljohnsoncarpentry.com
Yeah, keeping wood outside is always a struggle. I'll have a closer look at penofin.
Thanks.
This is how I did it on my own deck. I had some long length left over and came up with this design. The up rights are 2x4 mahogany with a taper. Bending wasn't to bad, I used a combination of Irwin heavy duty squeeze clamps and hand screws I plan to cap it some time in the future.
Wier/Barlow
When are you going to build the cap rail?
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Probably when I can afford some 5/4x8 mahogany, maybe some time this spring/summer."Shawdow boxing the appoclipse and wandering the land"
Wier/Barlow