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This is what I posted on another site, some of you have seen some of this before. I promised the jig setups for the dovetails and I'll post them soon but for now, enjoy these and know I'm nearing the end on this one!
So, about 7 years ago... I started working on this... now it nears completion and the progression is postable.
There were stairs here before... 2x12 pine, rough... meant to be carpeted but never were... I elected to make my own treads and risers out of white oak... except for the first tread which is "curly figured" white oak (God "made" that, all I did was stain and finish it).
Well, stairs need railings, so I had to install newell posts... instead of posts, I thought I'd go with what is called a boxed newell. In order to do that I had to create torsion boxes for each newel (lighter than solid wood but nearly as strong and allow access to bolts which hold the rails and balustrade in place.
What should I cover them with... not just plain wood frame and panel... but let's try raised slate panels in a face frame. Each piece of slate was bevel edged and placed into the face frame of white oak.
So with that in place on the loft, it looked like this:
What to do for a balustrade... Certainly not prefabbed balusters and such... how about something like this?
Here's what it looks like on the other side of the loft in real life:
What holds all those pieces together? not nails certainly.... I went for dovetails! As you will see, lots of dovetails!
Of course the REAL challenge was not those little 8' horizontal sections. I had to do the same for about 14 feet, at an exact angle to go up the stairs... sorta like this:
Here's a couple more shots of the nearly finished project:
There's still bits to finish... the pieces that cover the wall up the stairs.. "aging" the copper pyramid tops for the newells, and fixing the small tears from screws where the blue tape is on the railing.
Then I can go on to the stone work on the fireplace, inside and out.
So, about 7 years ago... I started working on this... now it nears completion and the progression is postable.
There were stairs here before... 2x12 pine, rough... meant to be carpeted but never were... I elected to make my own treads and risers out of white oak... except for the first tread which is "curly figured" white oak (God "made" that, all I did was stain and finish it).
Well, stairs need railings, so I had to install newell posts... instead of posts, I thought I'd go with what is called a boxed newell. In order to do that I had to create torsion boxes for each newel (lighter than solid wood but nearly as strong and allow access to bolts which hold the rails and balustrade in place.
What should I cover them with... not just plain wood frame and panel... but let's try raised slate panels in a face frame. Each piece of slate was bevel edged and placed into the face frame of white oak.
So with that in place on the loft, it looked like this:
What to do for a balustrade... Certainly not prefabbed balusters and such... how about something like this?
Here's what it looks like on the other side of the loft in real life:
What holds all those pieces together? not nails certainly.... I went for dovetails! As you will see, lots of dovetails!
Of course the REAL challenge was not those little 8' horizontal sections. I had to do the same for about 14 feet, at an exact angle to go up the stairs... sorta like this:
Here's a couple more shots of the nearly finished project:
There's still bits to finish... the pieces that cover the wall up the stairs.. "aging" the copper pyramid tops for the newells, and fixing the small tears from screws where the blue tape is on the railing.
Then I can go on to the stone work on the fireplace, inside and out.
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