I have a woodworking shop, a small business I work on weekends and evenings after my ‘real’ job. I specialize in hardwood items, such as entertainment centers,, shelving units, and I do specialty jobs for area contractors.
I have been asked by a contractor to build a spiral staircase. I have never attempted to build such a project. The bent and curving handrail seems to be especially daunting. This project will be built to look rustic, using heavy lodge pole pine ‘split logs’ for the treads, the balusters are to be dovetailed into the ends of each tread, and these dovetails are much larger that I can cut with a dovetail bit using my router.
Does anyone know of any online instructions or have any hints on how to go about planning and building a custom job like this? Any suggestions are welcome.
Steve
Replies
Spiral Stairs get easier by the 3rd round
Edited 5/14/2002 6:26:28 PM ET by NOVY_7
Sounds like a very exciting but also very challenging project Steve. If you
don't already have it you might want to pick up Stairs
: The Best of Fine Homebuilding, there are a couple of articles in it that
might help you with some of the engineering thinking you are going to need to
do.
Stairs
: The Best of Fine Homebuilding
Dovetailing the balusters is probably the least of your problems because as
Novy7 mentioned you can always cut them by hand. The toughest part is going
to be the handrail. Is it going to be a true continuous helix or can it be slightly
freeform since the whole project has what I'm perceiving as a rustic look and
feel. That might be your savior if you never done a helical railing before.
Can you fill me in some more on the handrail requirements and what the codes
in you area require.
If you really want to learn what goes in to a real helical rail you might want
to check out
Simplified Guide to Custom Stairbuilding and Tangent Handrailing by
George R. Di Cristina. A simplified guide to a very complicated difficult
subject. Very technical, math, trig, and geometry oriented and it really
covers the Built-up Tangent Handrailing Technique well. This is my stair
& railing bible but it's not for the faint at heart.
But really do yourself a quick favor and pick up Stairs
: The Best of Fine Homebuilding and at least get an overview of what you
might be getting into. There is a world of difference between building entertainment
centers & shelving units and fabricating a helical handrail. What 's the
radius too? Bigger is better too as far as the degree of difficulty you'll find
in fabricating and shaping that rail. Take a look at the helical rail on pg.
99 of The Best of FHB book to see what I'm talking about.
I wish someone would ask me to build a project like that.
"Do not go where the path may lead, go
instead where there is no path and
leave a trail."-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Jerrald,
Thanks for taking the time to reply to my problem. Yes, you are right, building the stairs project is very different from my 'normal' woodworking. So far I don't have any details, like the dimensions since the contractor just showed me a photo of a stair case he wants to 'copy'. I will be relyiing on his knowledge of the codes to answer those concerns. I already figured the dovetails would end up being cut by hand, but I figure I can build a jig and still remove most of the material with my router, and just do clean up by hand.
I agree, the hand rail is the biggest challange. I will see if I can find a copy of the stair building book here at the local wood working supply stores.
I may decide to pass on this job.... but I would sure like the challange of a project like this.
By the way, if you are going to be in NE Indiana, I could use some expert help with this job, since you mentioned you would like someone to ask you to do a job like this!
Thanks
Steve