Curved Stairs - Part 2

THE ADVENTURE OF THE CURVED STAIRS CONTINUES!

The masking tape will help me both keep glue off of the alder veneer of the stringer, AND to line up the first trim piece.

I’ve gotta just say this about clamps: You hear guys say that “You can never have enough clamps” and I think that’s hard for most people to comprehend. You know, “Why do you need a hundred of the same type of clamp?” I even remember when I bought all of these spring clamps at The Home Depot the cashier looked at me sort of like: What could you possibly do with so many clamps?!” Well it’s precisely for times like these when you need pretty much a clamp for every free spot because it’s totally crucial that I get good adhesion of these strips I’m bending around this curve.

This corner cap has taken an entire day to do but it looks great and I’m very happy and proud of how it turned out, especially seeing the individual strips all glued tight with no gaps.

Now it’s time for the mammoth post bracket to get bolted down into its final place.

That’s my full effort to try to budge this post and it’s good and solid.

Now back to the woodworking: Temporarily setting the bottom two shoes it’s time to start gluing and nailing down the rest of them. There are gaps left over that will need to be trimmed out later.

The rounded piece that wraps around the metal post bracket is called the volute. I didn’t know that that’s what it’s called before this project, but it’s comprised of several layers of ⅛” MDF with a final layer with a Alder veneer. I had some trouble on this one but luckily I had my friend Tyler standing by to hold it in this critical moment.

Once removed, I noticed that it had sprung back some and was not the right curve anymore. Using some bailing wire I tightened it back up to the proper dimension before gluing on the final layer and veneer.

Aaaaaaaaand once again, out come the clamps. The vaneer I’ve covered with masking tape to make sure I don’t drizzle glue onto it. My hope is that once I cut the wires it’s won’t spring back into the incorrect shape.

I’ll let this dry while I work on trimming out the gaps on the stairs.

Alright it looks good while it’s under tension, now let’s cut the wires and see how it looks….

Watch that again….It hardly even budged when I cut that 2nd wire.

One more curved piece to make to trim out the top of the volute. Not gluing to to the volute right now, just using the volute as a form so that I can make all the necessary cuts and shaping to this small piece before gluing it on.


The volute is 100% held on with construction adhesive. Now I can set the bottom two shows and move onto the knewel post and handrail.

The hand rail I made over 3 years ago when we built the house so I’m able to reuse it. It was one of the more difficult wood pieces that I had ever made so shortening it to the proper length really feels just wrong, like cutting off my arm or something.

My steel post was not perfectly plumb so I’ve made these blocks as shims to put the outer wood post right where it needed to be. They shims are held in place with spray adhesive.

To make this joint between the existing handrail and the new elbow just as solid as possible I'm cutting and gluing in two biscuites.

This is Rosario, he’s going to take what I’ve made, which is hopefully any good and take it to the 95% done mark.

I was not brave enough to tackle the staining and lacquering of the stairs...I’ve spent way to much time to bring it to this point, I really don’t want to mess it up doing the one thing I know pretty much nothing about doing right. I mean sure I’ve stained things, but nothing with so much time invested on the front end.

The painter is insisting that I remove all the previous stain and clear coat from the handrail so I’m doing my best to get that ready before he’s finished with the stairs and needs to continue on with the handrail .

The balusters (or spindles, as some people call them), need to be properly spaced and plumb, so I’ve made myself a template for laying them out on the shoe and then using a laser level to project up the the handrail the precise location where I need to drill to insert the balusters.

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