# A cut string stair in oak, blow by blow.



## MikeG. (19 Feb 2020)

Right, let's start at the beginning. I have a temporary staircase made of bits of construction pine, open tread, totally non-compliant with regulations, and we've put up with it for long enough. So I bought some oak. This stair will be the first and probably the last that I have ever made, and I wanted to make it individual but still traditional, so I settled on a cut string stair. Better get on with it......

I haven't any photos of running the waney edge boards through a friends big planer thicknesser, because that's just dull. Two boards that I couldn't take with me, though, were the strings, because of their length and the position of his machine. So I had to clean those up by hand:







I used an electric hand held plane as a scrub plane, then followed up with a belt sander across the grain, then along the grain, then a number 6 hand-plane to flatten, then a belt sander to finish. It was hard work to clean up the two strings, but on each of them I only had to get to a finish on one side, and just flatten the other side to something like:






Proper joiners would no doubt make the strings first, but I was a bit nervous of cutting into these massive timbers, especially as I wasn't clear how to reference the cut-string side and the straight string side.....so I did a production run of ballusters:











..........and ground to a halt. 25mm was too skinny. So I raided my stores and came up with a whole heap of assorted bits:






Thank goodness for a bandsaw and a planer thicknesser:






Thirty mm square was a whole lot better. I sanded them in pairs:






I wanted to have stopped chamfers, but I think I worked out this was over 300 stops, and I really didn't want to do those all by hand. I hate chamfers which stop in a burnt half-round feathery mess, and eventually, with a little help, came up with a plan involving a bearing-guided straight cutter and a jig or 3.









































On the end of each of the stair ballusters (which are two different lengths) is a dovetail. For those used to me hand-doing most stuff, sorry:
















However, I did shape the dovetails by hand:
















I also cut out the treads:






With a cut string, the end of the tread projects out past the string, but you don't see the end grain (normally). You mitre in a piece, which performs the job of trapping the ballusters in their dovetail mortice. Another job for the guided cutter and a pattern:






This time the guide was on the top:






There was also the bullnose step at the bottom to deal with:


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## MikeG. (19 Feb 2020)

This is what I am making:


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## Nelsun (19 Feb 2020)

Thanks Mike. Looking forward to the rest of the build. Is this your first set of [making] stairs? From other folk I've seen either restoring or building anew, it's something easy to get lost down some dark rabbit holes with. Would love to build one some day... in theory at least.


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## Steve Maskery (19 Feb 2020)

That is absolutely the right way to mould the ballusters. Many people (such as the bloke who made my SIL's very expensive oak staircase) would have just routed with a 45 degree cutter, so that one face has a straight lead out and the adjacent face has a curved one. He also dealt with the @two different length problem by buying in a load of ready-made ballusters and sticking and extra bit on the end, end-grain-to-end-grain. Not even making the joint at a cove or bead. It looks awful. Listed building. But she was married at the time to a bloke on 300K p.a. More money than taste, that's the phrase that comes to mind.
Glad you are showing how to do it properly.

Of course, I am shocked that you didn't do it with nothing more than a shave horse and a spokeshave. Standards are slipping, Mike, standards are slipping...


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## MikeG. (19 Feb 2020)

Steve Maskery":9jpmgbgw said:


> ......... I am shocked that you didn't do it with nothing more than a shave horse and a spokeshave. Standards are slipping, Mike, standards are slipping...



:lol: :lol:


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## MikeG. (19 Feb 2020)

Back to ballusters. Here's the pile of dovetailed ballusters, for the stairs only. It's a different detail on the landing:






Having made the tenon, time for the mortice. The location of these is absolutely critical. With a straight string you just space the ballusters out along the string, taking no account of the step position. With a cut string stair the ballusters actually sit on the tread, and need to be in the same place on each one, and evenly space up the stair. So I worked it out carefully in CAD, then made a router jig:






The straight sided mortise was adjusted to a dovetail, using a chisel another little pattern piece in ply:


























Now.........deep breath........time to tackle the strings. Firstly, do a careful drawing, and make a jig. This one just for marking out. After much thought I decided to start with the cut string:
















I used a jig because I don't have the little round screw-on thingies that pros use on a roofer's square (or similar). The jig simply had the rise along one side and the going along the other, with a right angle between.






I also had check dimensions so that I could see if there were any accumulated errors. I checked a few times before I picked up a saw:











Now, it's important to understand that one string (the cut string) uses the underside of the tread and the back of the riser as a reference, and the other side (the straight string, against the wall) uses the top/ outside. I haven't the first idea how they set out the two different sides in relation to each other, when other than the floor and top newel lines there isn't a single point of reference relating one to the other. I made up another little jig:






I placed the cut string on top of the straight string, marked off the reference points top and bottom, and then used the little jig to transfer the step and riser locations across:











I raided the scrap bin for another jig, this time to make a template for routing out the housings for the tread and riser. Lots of careful measurement ensued (the sliver of cereal packet cardboard represents a wedge):





















Again, I worked out how far apart each jig station was, and marked that down the string. I did a trial cut on the back of the string:











As you can see from the trial fit, I needed to adjust a tiny bit, so I added a few layers of tape:






This was the first go in earnest:






Disaster! Running around the corner on the underside of the nosing (overhang), I assumed that a square corner on the jig would produce a square corner in the cut.....but it didn't. It rounded it. So I had a little think:











I now could make the cuts in two different phases, and so never actually run the router around the corner.

I found it easier to work on the tall horses:






I don't seem to have a photo of the finished straight string. More tomorrow.


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## Trevanion (19 Feb 2020)

That is the only downside with stair trenching jigs, they leave a little radius on the riser/tread junction which can be unsightly but more often than not nobody notices. You discovered the workaround anyway!


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## Trainee neophyte (20 Feb 2020)

Steve Maskery":5prxdc65 said:


> Of course, I am shocked that you didn't do it with nothing more than a shave horse and a spokeshave. Standards are slipping, Mike, standards are slipping...



There is photographic proof on another thread that Mr Maskery not only owns a chisel, but has used it in anger, with a mallet! And a _hand_ saw !The universe is turning inside out. It feels like a Doctor Who episode, where alternate realities are on collision course. It's not going to end well.

Perhaps there is a simpler explanation. MikeG and Steve Maskery have swapped bodies. It's all starting to make sense now...


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## MikeG. (20 Feb 2020)

Here's a couple of photos I missed from the process yesterday, which prove I am not Steve Maskery. :lol: The strings need a dead straight edge for setting out the geometry of the stairs. There's no way I can handle 12' by 1' by 2" boards through a planer alone, so I sat them one at a time on the horses and did it with a hand plane. Once I got close to straight I used my aluminium straight edge to show me the high spots, just by rubbing it backwards and forwards:











That smear of grey is oxide of aluminium, and all you do is plane off the high bits that it reveals.

Oh, and by the way............that's what a workshop floor should look like, you extraction fiends. :lol: :lol: :wink:


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## MikeG. (20 Feb 2020)

I was developing a small pile of scrap by now. Just to give me a mindless task for half an hour I made the wedges and support blocks, using up the scrap pile in the process. All done on the bandsaw:






After that orgy of machining (the stock preparation and cutting to size of the treads and risers had alone taken over 2 days), I felt the need of some handtool work. Time to make the brackets.

I printed out full size my drawing, and pasted it on a scrap of MDF. I used this as a template just to draw around, and then cut out the brackets on the bandsaw:






I had taken the unusual decision to dovetail the joint between the brackets and the risers. This meant that ideally they would be the same thickness, so the stock for both had been machined to 12mm. After sanding the edges on my mounted belt sander and just a little hand finishing, then running a tiny chamfer to remove the arris, they were ready for the dovetailing:






Locating the bracket in relation to the risers was the biggest head-scratcher of the whole job, by a country mile. Neither the top nor the bottom lined up, with the bracket being 30 or 40mm narrower than the riser. I calculated, offered up and marked, calculated again, offered up again......and in the end just had to make a decision and live with it. Seriously, that was a sleepless night.

Tails first:











Someone here (UKW) insists that chopping all the waste out with a chisel is the quickest way, rather than using a coping saw, and that a relieving cut up the middle of the waste helps its removal. Well, I tried it, and it was decidedly second best. the waste jams horribly on tails this small. The half done with a coping saw were quicker and cleaner:






I set an adjustable square to the dimension I had sweated over for so long, and chopped out the sockets. Dry fit:











That was the trial board, and everything was left over-long for potential adjustment, hence the deepened sockets. This was one of the subsequent boards (time to sort out that RAS blade!):






Then a few hours happily spent with marking gauge, knife, saw, chisels and mallet:






I glued that lot up and left them to dry overnight, and tackled the three tenons on the ends of the strings to take to the newel posts (1 at the bottom, 2 at the top). Mark, knife cut, chisel chop, saw, chisel, router plane:











(That's a Sandvic. Great saw.....and being 12" long the perfect length for a job like this).






I cleaned up the dovetailsthe following the morning, and did a trial assembly:











It's worth noting that the two strings still have no commonality. I had to prop the straight string on piles of off cuts to bring it up level with the cut string. When it comes to the final assembly I shall by doing this more carefully, and with a spirit level.


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## Trevanion (20 Feb 2020)

Looking great so far!

Is that a kitchen devil marking knife? :lol:


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## MikeG. (20 Feb 2020)

Trevanion":3fggykxn said:


> .......Is that a kitchen devil marking knife? :lol:



Possibly. It is certainly an old vegetable knife, cut down to suit.


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## AndyT (20 Feb 2020)

That's a lot of impressive hard work!
Is your bad back better?


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## MikeG. (20 Feb 2020)

AndyT":1lk7ayu3 said:


> ......Is your bad back better?



100%, thanks Andy.


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## Doug71 (20 Feb 2020)

Trevanion":14ifxim3 said:


> That is the only downside with stair trenching jigs, they leave a little radius on the riser/tread junction which can be unsightly but more often than not nobody notices. You discovered the workaround anyway!



When I made my stairs I used a scotia bead to cover the gap

Makes a nice decorative feature but probably a bit fussy for the style Mike is making.


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## MikeG. (20 Feb 2020)

Yeah, I don't know why I made a fuss, because I'm putting a bead under the nosing too.


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## MikeG. (20 Feb 2020)

Next job was the end caps for the treads. These are the part of the tread that project past the ballusters and the string, between the ornate brackets. First job was to plane the bits down to the right thickness, and cut a mitre on the end. I have a beautiful SCMS hanging on the far wall of my workshop, but it's big and heavy, and I simply couldn't get to it with all the bags of waste in the way, and finding somewhere to use it looked difficult too. Imagine a full sized staircase occupying the middle of your workshop!

So, I cut them by hand, and shot them on the shooting board:











There are minor variations at each step, so this wasn't a production run. Besides, I did my best to colour match them, so they were individually made:






They then needed rounding over to match the stair nosing, so first up are some shots of setting up the router table:
















....and finally the resulting end cap. I suppose I should have mitred in the near end in a separate piece, but life is too short, and I just rounded over the end grain:
















Difficult taking a photo one handed with a big SLR camera whilst trying to hold the joint tight with the other. I failed!

Now to the newels. These are cored with a piece of 45x45 softwood, which I first adjusted to complete straightness:






After seeing nothing but oak shavings for the last week or more, this was a change:






You don't want to see me ripping and planing boards, so here is the two stage glue-up of the first newel:






......and then jumping on a day or two, the second stage of the process. This is not the way to do it, I realised, and did the other two differently:











The job I had been looking forward too least was the bullnose bottom step. This involved bending solid oak around a 150 radius curve, and although I had 1 spare board just in case, I broke 3 pieces of scrap in experimenting before tackling the job for real, so I was pretty apprehensive. Firstly, I made up a former in softwood:











Note the tight angle on the near side of the top photo. This is to link into an under-squinted (half dovetail, if you like) element on the end of......never mind, the photos probably explain it better:






I reduced the 12mm thickness of the riser to just 2mm over the whole area of the bend. I then offered the dovetail element of the former into the corresponding part of the riser, and held it roughly in place:






I then applied an old towel, and some water:






The weight of the former and the towel started to curl the wood, and I just kept on checking, watering, and tightening the curve over the next 3 hours:











You'll forgive me for not having any "during" photos of the actual glue up, as it was hectic and fraught. First, I glue and screwed the former in place, and then hauled the riser around it carefully, anchoring one end with the dovetail/ under-squint. Once I finally got it all the way around the former (all this with glue smeared everywhere), I tapped it down into the groove on the underside of the tread, an clamped everything loosely, before driving in some folding wedges which pulled everything up tight. You can see that I had to pack the wedges out a little:




















That was actually late into the evening. I had planned on leaving the board soaking overnight, but on my last check before going to bed I had found that it was ready, so I started a glue up at 10.30pm, which isn't always a great idea.The following morning I de-clamped, marked up, and cut it to size:











With a bit of cleaning up and sanding it looked OK:






What a relief. That was the biggest remaining obstacle to finishing the job. The rest is just donkey work.


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## MikeG. (20 Feb 2020)

I cleaned up the newel post by hand:






The other two newels were made in one stage, not two, and this saved a faff with the plane getting an exact fit between the two pieces. However, it did mean a lot of glue spread in a hurry, and lots and lots of clamps:






I had to go back to the wood yard for more supplies. This is how all the wood for this stair started:






I mocked up two or 3 handrail sections for my wife to choose from, and very wisely she chose the simplest:











I had found the most perfect piece of 2" oak for the handrails at the yard, absolutely dead straight and blemish-free. With one sensibly place cut up the middle, at the correct angle, I could save time and waste:






I'm seriously short of space for dealing with big pieces of wood, and had also to revert back to my old horses:
















That will plane down to 65x45mm. I've decided to do individual mortices for each ballusters, rather than a groove with infill pieces, so there will be no full-length routing on these handrails. Thank goodness, as I've no idea how I could have managed in the constrained space I have left to work in.

That brings us up to date. It won't be fast from now on as I am somewhat busy with work for a few days.


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## sammy.se (20 Feb 2020)

Amazing WIP as always Mike, thanks for sharing with us!!

We're you tempted to mitre the oak on the newels, to give the illusion of solid oak?

Sent from my SM-G973F using Tapatalk


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## MikeG. (20 Feb 2020)

I hate mitres. Hate, hate, hate them. They'd open up and make me look a fool. No, my cunning plan is to do some stop chamfers and a lowered panel which will be close to the join line and take your eye away. I also tried pretty hard with the grain matching, in one case using adjacent pieces from one board. I also chose rift sawn boards so the face and side grains weren't too contrasty. But you are right, I'll see the join.....


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## MikeG. (20 Feb 2020)

I grabbed a couple of hours in the workshop this afternoon, and tackled the upper newels. After squaring and straightening them up they finished at the usual 90mm square. I cut them to final length, and then set out their joinery. Unfortunately, this photo doesn't show clearly the reference point, which is the top of the second top step, but it does show that the two mortices are in entirely different locations:







The little opening in the join caused by a bit of snipe is why this newel is this way around. It will be hidden when the stair is in place.

Now in joinery I would normally just chop out mortises with a mallet and chisel, but these are big....about 8" x 1" x about 65mm deep, more like green oak work than joinery. So I did what I do in green oak framing, and drilled out much of the waste first:






Then some chiseling:






.....and some checking:






Before finally easing it into place:






Not perfect, so I'll tidy up tomorrow:


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## samhay (21 Feb 2020)

Having never built stairs before, this has been/is an excellent read, thanks. 
How will you fix these on?



MikeG.":2c7ap87e said:


>


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## MikeG. (21 Feb 2020)

samhay":xt6drwxk said:


> Having never built stairs before, this has been/is an excellent read, thanks.



Neither have I. And thanks.



> How will you fix these on?



I'm not sure yet, but I'm seriously thinking of just nailing them on, with a drop of glue, of course. It's not impossible I might fit some loose tongues to help with alignment. I contemplated a mitre spline for at least half a nanosecond. Did I mention that I hate mitres?


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## Steliz (21 Feb 2020)

Another great WIP Mike, thanks. Very interesting and certainly helps to remove some of the fear factor for anyone else considering taking on a similar challenge. Not me though, I live in a bungalow!


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## El Barto (21 Feb 2020)

Fantastic job so far, thanks for sharing.


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## Racers (21 Feb 2020)

Cracking work and WIP, Mike.

I can almost smell the oak from here.

Pete

No bog oak details?


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## MikeG. (21 Feb 2020)

Thanks Pete.



Racers":2y8j34an said:


> ......No bog oak details?



No, I don't want to make this over fussy. There is going to be a little bit of carving, but this is a cottage, not a manor house, so I don't want to be overdoing things. It's hard to get the balance right.


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## Racers (21 Feb 2020)

I see, I did think for a bit you had run out :shock: :shock: :shock: 

Pete


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## MikeG. (21 Feb 2020)

Racers":2pps338j said:


> I see, I did think for a bit you had run out :shock: :shock: :shock:
> 
> Pete



I've got enough to last me for 10 years, I reckon.


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## Lons (21 Feb 2020)

Fascinating project Mike which I'm thoroughly enjoying reading. It's going to look very good when finished.
It's helped me a lot tbh as for years I've been thinking of ripping out our 40 year old parana pine straight string staircase and replacing with oak.
So I've decided I'm not going to do it! Too much like hard work so it will be out with the sander and refurbish the thing. The thought of making 5 newels and 46 balusters etc fills me with dread.


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## MikeG. (22 Feb 2020)

Lons":10c5v5x0 said:


> ......It's helped me a lot tbh as for years I've been thinking of ripping out our 40 year old parana pine straight string staircase and replacing with oak.
> So I've decided I'm not going to do it! Too much like hard work..........



=D> =D> Brilliant! :lol: :lol: 

The thought of sanding 46 ballusters and 5 newels, plus all the other stuff, would fill me with dread. Good luck to you.


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## Lons (22 Feb 2020)

MikeG.":3q0rpda5 said:


> The thought of sanding 46 ballusters and 5 newels, plus all the other stuff, would fill me with dread. Good luck to you.


It does!
I have a cunning plan though, if I procrastinate long enough we'll get to the stage where we need to downsize ant it will become a project for someone else.


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## MikeG. (23 Feb 2020)

Working out the newel on the wall side:






Here they both are:






The back of the 11th tread is notched to suit:











And the newels slipped in smoothly first time:











However, we have a problem, Houston:






Something went wrong in the setting out, and so the newels will have to move inwards by a few mm (I settled on 6, because that was the thickness of a handy piece of MDF). I can't do this until I have the stair apart again, and the only thing it has implications for is the height of the handrail, which will go upwards by 3 or 4 mm as a result:






Whilst cogitating over that I glued up the rest of the bottom newel, which isn't the same as the others:






Perhaps those who make stairs regularly could comment on this. Those steps where the riser is embedded in the newel.......what do you do? If you put a slot&wedge arrangement in as per the string, I can't see how you could ever actually get the riser into place. So, I cleared out the entire area behind so that it can slip in from the back. Is this what you guys do?











Chamfers. You know how much I like a nice chamfer. Well, here's mt standard chamfer stop, before and after:











And the completed newel (without caps etc):






Being very precise about where you actually are on a piece of wood is critical. Here I started drilling out for a mortise for the handrail, had a second thought, checked, found out I was on the wrong face:






OK, that's a pity but it's only a little bit of filler, and a nice reminder every time I use the stairs that I am not perfect. Eventually I chopped out a suitable mortise on the right part of the correct newel:






The following day the bottom newel was ready to tackle. First job was to clean up the faces of the thickened bit at the bottom, and square up the base:






Then chop a pair of mortises in the usual way:






And a first trial fit:






It was absolutely perfect on the inside, where no-one will ever see it:






But poor on the outside:






If only I had a shoulder plane. But I've managed forever without......just fix a straight-edge, scribe with a knife, and chisel away:






Fixed:






Marking out around newels is awkward because nothing is on the same plane. I found it easier to make a quick jig of the exact shape of the tread section:











Whilst marking stuff up it seemed sensible to mark the shoulders for the handrail:
















Wise to do that before shaping the rail, because transferring markings around a non-rectilinear shape with rounded corners would be some sort of mugs game.

Here I am transferring the mortise position from the top newel to the bottom:






After doing all the marking up around the bottom newel, time to start chopping wood away:






My personal method of marking involves some little symbols. Here the double arrows through a marking out line tell be to leave the line (ie cut against the far edge of the line). In other words, my first stab at the setting out hadn't been special:
















There are housing joints on 3 faces of this lower newel:











It's not complicated, but you must stop and think. It all came together OK in the end:











That's another of those risers without any backing behind it in the newel.

Having done all the joinery to the newel, now I can get on and do the frilly bits. First, choose, then set out, the carving (every stair has a date carved into the newel, doesn't it?):






This allows the setting out of the cove cuts (not quite fluting):
















I shall enjoy carving those tomorrow. The wood looks clear and blemish free, my chisels are sharp.......


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## Trevanion (23 Feb 2020)

Ah, I've gone one step further Mike... I've actually done the handrail mortice on the wrong side of the newel, more than once!


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## MikeG. (23 Feb 2020)

This was the wrong side, by 90 degrees.


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## Trevanion (23 Feb 2020)

MikeG.":2egzclbc said:


> This was the wrong side, by 90 degrees.



Yehbut all you had was a tiny little mark compared with the one-inch wide mortice I put into the wrong side of the newel, ain't no filler hiding that!  

It's especially annoying when you've done all the trenching only to cock it up doing something silly like that and need to do the trenching again... :evil:


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## Bm101 (24 Feb 2020)

This is going to look the bees knees once you've painted it Mike! Well done. Cant wait to see it finished. Exciting stuff.

Have you decided on a colour yet?


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## lurker (24 Feb 2020)

Enjoying the thread, but it makes me feel so inadequate.
None of the woodwork is theoretically beyond me, but I would have made so many mistakes, I would have slit my throat by now!


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## MikeG. (24 Feb 2020)

Bm101":38hm02pe said:


> This is going to look the bees knees once you've painted it Mike! Well done. Cant wait to see it finished. Exciting stuff.
> 
> Have you decided on a colour yet?



=D> =D> Very good. :lol: :lol:


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## MikeG. (24 Feb 2020)

lurker":35mye5ly said:


> Enjoying the thread, but it makes me feel so inadequate.
> None of the woodwork is theoretically beyond me, but I would have made so many mistakes, I would have slit my throat by now!



Like all projects which seem at first to be "big", it is in fact just a long series of small projects. You're right, the woodwork isn't tricky, although the carving I've done today was a little nerve-jangling. The most complex thing is knowing what you are doing, and hopefully there the drawings you would be working from would tell you all you needed to know. I have the luxury of being able to run inside and look at a decent drawing on the computer every time I come across an issue, but honestly the guys who build these things every day of the week could do a straight run like this in their sleep. The cut string makes it awkward, but once it is set out the problem has gone away.


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## MikeG. (24 Feb 2020)

I got 2 or 3 hours in this afternoon, and started by stopping some chamfers on the main newel:







Then it was time for some carving:


























I don't have any carving chisels. I only use my normal bench chisels:











I hate mitres. I hate, hate, hate mitres. So I designed in 8 of them, just for fun:
















Eight pieces fitted, 11 made. I hate the damn things.
















Anyone any good ideas for cleaning up the router burn marks from the end of the cove cuts? I don't own a Dremmel or carving gouges.


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## Bm101 (24 Feb 2020)

https://www.toolstation.com/draper-moun ... gIHG_D_BwE

I've used these sorts a few times to get me out of a spot.
If you Google sanding ball drill there are various DIY guides to make up sanding balls.
Would a scraper do it?


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## MikeG. (24 Feb 2020)

Oooh, I've got a set like that. I thought they were just for metal. I'll do an experiment tomorrow, thanks.


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## Bm101 (24 Feb 2020)

Edited above post for scrape suggestion. 
I used the ball sanders to relieve the edges on dog holes on my bench to prevent the holdfast breaking out the splintery keruing top. Worked ok but they do clog, as you say, they are for metal I think.


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## MikeG. (24 Feb 2020)

Yes, I could fabricate a suitable scraper pretty quickly. Good shout. Why didn't I think of that?


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## Jake (24 Feb 2020)

Scraper is probably your answer, but abrasives wise this sort of thing is what I would look to for something like this. Scraper is less likely to smudge the sharpness I'd guess.

https://www.abrasivesplus.com/buy/gritt ... mm_168.htm

(edit: actually that looks pretty stiff, there's a version with more flexible strands but I can't find it).


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## MikeG. (24 Feb 2020)

I'm pretty sure that would smudge things too much. The scraper is the answer, I'm sure.


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## Phlebas (24 Feb 2020)

MikeG. said:


> Did you deliberately wait for 2020 to make the carving easier?
> 
> Or is it a cricket reference?
> 
> The whole thing is impressive though, I have to admit. And, excuse my ignorance, is the whole thing assembled and glued up before being put in place, or is it done insitu - I can see (theoretical) advantages either way.


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## MikeG. (24 Feb 2020)

:lol: No, the date is the date. I should have built these last year but hurt my back.

As for the construction.........that raises interesting points. My plan is to take everything apart, apply a coat of finish, then glue in a couple of steps and risers at the top and bottom before carrying it in to the house. Solid oak is really heavy, and I reckon it would take 4 of us to shift if it was completely built in the workshop. Once in the house it will be offered up as is to mark the bottom edge for any scribing (and adjust the cut outs in the top newels), and to cut the wall string to length, before being lowered and then fully assembled. This will mean having a ladder for one night whilst the glue goes off before the final positioning the following day.


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## Trevanion (24 Feb 2020)

You can sometimes get away with using the actual router bit to scrape away burn marks by hand but it is a little fiddly, I'd guess even more on a cove.

Are you staining this a rather dark shade? Couldn't help but notice that the filler you've used on the pinholes is mahogany-ish.


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## MikeG. (24 Feb 2020)

I'm not staining it. I try to go darker with the filler than the wood as they all seem to fade over time, and light filler stands out like dogs doodahs. As the filler lightens and the wood darkens, there'll be a sweet-spot where the pin holes vanish.


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## Trainee neophyte (24 Feb 2020)

MikeG":21f22apn said:


> Eight pieces fitted, 11 made.



One piece was a "proof of concept", the next was a prototype, and there may have been a "design challenge" at some point.

It's all about how you view the world ;-) 

(Ps thank you for sharing - the woodwork is a massive endeavour on its own, but endlessly stopping to photograph and annotate is another burden on top. It is hugely appreciated.)


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## MikeG. (24 Feb 2020)

Trainee neophyte":2hhcrm19 said:


> ....... endlessly stopping to photograph and annotate is another burden on top. It is hugely appreciated.)



I've got used to it over the last 4 or 5 years of this house restoration. I'm probably a bit more assiduous when in the workshop doing woodwork, because I'd rather talk about that than say, plastering. Guess what I'm doing tomorrow.


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## KeenDIYer (25 Feb 2020)

Truly inspiring. Thanks for sharing your work so far.

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk


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## MikeG. (25 Feb 2020)

It's a pleasure. As I say, pretty much everyday stuff for 2 or 3 people on here who work in a joinery workshop.

-

I've just noticed this:






The decoration means I won't be able to put dowels through that face, which is a bit of a pain. I'll have to do them blind, from the other side. That's OK because I've got plenty of wood thickness to work with, but the nightmare is if a dowel splits or breaks half-way in. You then don't have a hole to knock it back from.


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## AndyT (25 Feb 2020)

If a dowel does split, on the inside, hidden away under the bottom step, I vote that you cut yourself some slack and just leave it. You can still put a fresh one in alongside.
I think you've earned the right to do that!


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## Gerard Scanlan (25 Feb 2020)

What a fantastic build. When I got to the section about carving a design I felt sure you were going to carve some apples and pears. But then I realised you meant the date. The right style of stairs are really important for a house. Wonderful project.


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## Bm101 (25 Feb 2020)

Cockney staircase! 
Allo Mary Poppins.


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## MikeG. (25 Feb 2020)

Gerard Scanlan":u44shnx8 said:


> What a fantastic build. When I got to the section about carving a design I felt sure you were going to carve some apples and pears. But then I realised you meant the date. The right style of stairs are really important for a house. Wonderful project.



Thanks. ....and the carving doesn't finish with the date. I'm going to experiment with some Tudor roses on the brackets. This is a 300 year old oak framed cottage.


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## Trevanion (25 Feb 2020)

Are you going to carve the URL of this thread somewhere so people in the future could see how it was made? :wink: :lol:


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## MikeG. (26 Feb 2020)

My first job on resumption was to cut up an old saw plate and make a mini scraper to clean up the burnt bits in the end of the cove cuts:

















Contrast that with how it was previously:






Next, I took everything apart and did a final sand and clean up:






I put a bead on the under edge of the cut string:






and made a rough template of the area on the string that is going to be covered by brackets and the step end piece:











That's the area where I won't be putting a coat of finish. I'll be doing a coat prior to reassembling.

Here I am transferring the balluster locations to the handrail. I actually only did this for 3 ballusters, and calculated the spacing for the rest:






I messed about with the handrail joints for ages. Probably hours. I seldom get aggravated with woodwork, but this just didn't seem to cooperate at all, and the rail went in and out of place 5 or 6 times, which isn't an easy process in itself:











Having finally sorted the joints out, I could get on and chop out the mortises for the ballusters. I had decided to do it this way when I looked at a friend's staircase last week, and thought a wonderful stair had been spoiled by shoddy infill work between the ballusters under the handrail. I couldn't think of a good way of getting that detail absolutely spot on, so decided to do individual mortises instead. The implications of that decision took a while to sink in........






Obviously, the mortise is at an angle. Here is my little checking jig:











I made a setting out jig, a chiseling jig, and a checking jig. The first mortise took me an hour. There were 19 altogether:











All told, I was chiseling for nearly 5 hours. Five bloody hours!!

It was such a relief to finally finish and to be able to start planing a shape into the handrail:
















As it happens, I finished that and brought it in to the house for my wife to try out. She's happy.


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## Trevanion (26 Feb 2020)

MikeG.":3d9pu47b said:


> All told, I was chiseling for nearly 5 hours. Five bloody hours!!



That's why no one mortices the handrails and strings anymore! :lol: Unless you've got a tiltable bed morticer it's pretty much the most time-consuming way you could do it.

What was shoddy about your mate's staircase infill, Mike? Was it gappy on the corners of the spindles where they might have rounded off the sharp edges of them before fitting or was it something different?


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## MikeG. (27 Feb 2020)

The infills didn't sit flush with the surrounding handrail. They sat about a mm proud. Given that some of them are at eye level as you walk alongside the stair, you'd want to do better than that. You can't plane them to get them absolutely spot on. The one thing I struggle with in my workshop are big rebates as I don't have a spindle moulder or table saw, so running this groove nicely, believe it or not, would have been a challenge, particularly as I had already sloped the sides of the rail. Minor aside, but, nailing the pins home to hold infill pieces can be a pain because you are hammering upwards against a bouncy handrail.


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## Trevanion (27 Feb 2020)

Ah yes, I make mine 2-3mm or so proud and have a small chamfer on either side of infill strip because there’s just no way of hiding it. I’ll take a photo next time.

As you say though, since you don’t have kit to do that kind of groove it probably would’ve taken the same amount of time to do the groove and cut in the infills accurately as it did to mortice them. It’s still a higher class of work to mortice the spindles though!


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## Trigs (27 Feb 2020)

Great attention to detail, excellent skills


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## Gerard Scanlan (2 Mar 2020)

I really appreciate the fact that your eye for detail had you chopping mortises for five hours. It shows true pride in your work and it is something that we should consider more often. Obviously people look for more efficient ways to do things once they have been created. But it doesn't mean that one size fits all. The finished piece being fit for purpose and a thing of beauty is why you started in the first place. Who is arranging the coach trip for us all to come see this stair when it is finally finished?


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## MikeG. (2 Mar 2020)

Gerard Scanlan":1k32l9jo said:


> ......... Who is arranging the coach trip for us all to come see this stair when it is finally finished?



Finished? What a strange concept. :lol: :lol: I've just finished fitting the stairs, and although knackered, all went extremely well. I'll post some photos tomorrow. And as for coach parties........you're more than welcome. I have cake. Lots of cake.


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## Lons (2 Mar 2020)

MikeG.":1rtq178u said:


> Gerard Scanlan":1rtq178u said:
> 
> 
> > ......... Who is arranging the coach trip for us all to come see this stair when it is finally finished?
> ...



Make sure there's a large trailer on the bus as I've heard there are a few bits of bog oak around there somewhere. :wink:


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## MikeG. (3 Mar 2020)

Final preparations for fitting the stairs included drilling for the draw-bore pegging, and making the dowels. I made a quick (10 minutes) dowel making jig with a chisel and a hole-in/ hole-out. This was just a proof of principle go in a piece of scrap, but it worked so well that I just went ahead and made the dowels (10mm diameter):






I also routed some slots in the ends of the stairs and in the stair-end cap thingies for floating tongues:






I put a first coat of lacquer on the stair components so that glue squeeze out could be cleaned up nicely:






Here are a whole lot of "before" photos of the stair we have lived with for the last few years:


























Before I could bring the new stairs in I wanted to plaster all the landing. Plastering is a messy job and it would have ruined the new staircase, so I spent a couple of days going from this:
















To this:











I brought all the bits and pieces in, and glued and pegged the strings and top newels:






The house quickly turned back into a building site:






Time to get rid of the old stairs. I secured a scaffold pole on the first floor and looped a rope around it and the stairs:






I positioned one of my tall horses, undid all the securing screws, and pushed the stairs off the trimmer, lowering them safely and gently:











After breaking up the temporary stairs it was time to start work on getting the new ones in. Firstly, on the landing I cut back the flooring to expose the timbers below:
















I then offered up the wall string to check for fit, and to mark out where the toe end needed cutting to length and for some holes where it could be bolted to structure :
















I am taking a very unusual approach. Generally a straight flight stair like this is delivered with the stair fully constructed bar the newels, handrails, ballusters, and and steps which house into the newels. You bring the flight into the vicinity of the stairwell, complete the construction, and then lift the whole thing into place. That can be damned heavy, especially in a solid oak stair like this, and it can take 3 or 4 people to lift it into place. With the luxury of constructing it only 30 or 40 metres from the stairwell, I decided to bring the components in and build the stair in situ.

To establish the geometry (ie make sure everything was square) I made up the top couple of steps and temporarily fixed on of the lower ones in place, with the stair lying flat on some horses:






The bottom newel is only dry-fitted, with an undersized peg to hold it tight in place:






My buddy popped over for half an hour, and we lifted the start of the stair into place:






I managed to kick the temporary dowel in the newel post and break it:






But luckily I managed to pull it out. That could have been a horror.

Then it was just a question of gluing and pinning for the next few hours:
















I used a construction adhesive for bedding the treads and risers into and onto the strings. This is to provide a slightly more flexible grip for those parts of the stair where long grain crosses short grain, and where shrinkage might lead to some squeaking. All the wedges and long grain joins were done with PVA. Normally I am pretty conservative with glue, aiming for the minimum squeeze out possible, but putting this lot together was a real fiddle, so I was constantly against the clock with glue going off. There was no time for niceties, and glue was slathered around everywhere. As I was working under the stair most of the time quite a lot of it dripped on me, and I'm still trying to get it out of my hair:






Before the bottom newel could be fitted, I had to put the handrail in. Because the ballusters are dovetailed into the ends of the treads and go into mortises in the rail, they had to be fitted before the handrail, and have the rail lowered onto them:









































Not my finest hour:






There's more to do, with the tread-end bits to fit, the landing rails and aprons to do, newel caps to make and fit (there's even some turning to do!!), and an understairs cupboard to build.


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## MikeG. (3 Mar 2020)

After a workshop tidy-up, I thought it would be fun to lay out all of the jigs and drawings I've made/ done for this staircase build:


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## Marineboy (3 Mar 2020)

Amazing! Well done sir.


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## AndyT (3 Mar 2020)

I've often looked at old staircases to work out how they were put together. I've also skimmed through old textbooks to appreciate how some of the details go.

But this thread has been better, showing the thinking, the design decisions, the construction and the sheer volume of hard work required. Thanks again for taking on the extra effort of photographing and describing it all.


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## NickM (3 Mar 2020)

Wonderful stuff. Thanks for sharing.


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## MikeG. (3 Mar 2020)

Thanks fellas.

I did the tread end caps this afternoon:


























It'll look better when the moulding goes under the stair nosing.


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## Trainee neophyte (3 Mar 2020)




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## MikeG. (3 Mar 2020)

Steady on, TN. We've regular forum contributors for whom this is everyday stuff. They don't get a standing ovation despite probably doing a better job than me, and certainly doing a quicker one. I thank you nonetheless.


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## Trevanion (3 Mar 2020)

You're doing yourself a disservice, Mike.

To compare this with what I and many others make wouldn't be fair. What you've made is a labour of love and the attention to detail shows through everywhere, generally what I do is simply "just business". I certainly haven't seen dovetailed riser-bracket joints on *any* modern work as it's almost always a mitre cut, pin it a few times and push a bit of cascamite and dust into the joint or have some kind of trim pinned over the top of the joint with screws underneath fixing it together. Even the spindles are dovetailed into the treads, which again, you never see done anymore as it's always a square mortice either with a shoulder or not and a screw straight into the tread and then covered with the cover strip.

There's niggles, there are always niggles! To be frank, if a piece of work _didn't_ have some kind of niggle somewhere and it was completely perfect you'd just assume it was completely machine-made. It seems everyone is always striving to perfection but once you _actually see_ perfection you realise just how bland and boring it is.

It's an outstanding piece of classical craftsmanship Mike, I'm sure George Ellis would approve.


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## MikeG. (3 Mar 2020)

Very kind of you Trev. 

_Mike, off to read up on George Ellis......._


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## Sgian Dubh (3 Mar 2020)

I've watched the progress of this with much interest, Mike. Congratulations on what looks to be a very fine end result. 

I sometimes wish I was in a better position to post the results of my work. But most of what I've been up to on the making front over the last few years has been undertaken on a sub-contract freelance basis, and therefore not really mine to photograph and show. For instance, I'm getting towards the end of a custom veneering job for a large walk in wardrobe, plus additional cabinetry: roughly 60 square metres of walnut veneer and some plain backing veneer in places over MDF doors and other panels, plus four quarter round pilasters with a 100 mm radius, all slip matched, hand cut, and laid in a vac-bag. I'm veneering up the final parts this week, which will be installed later. I saw a snap of the partial assembly today undertaken by sub-contractors (and missing the bits I'm still working on), and although the image was fairly small and of low quality on a phone, it had the appearance of having come together rather nicely. It's one of those jobs I'd rather like to add to my portfolio, but I'm pretty sure that won't happen. Slainte.


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## Bm101 (3 Mar 2020)

And then there's the likes of me. How utterly amazing that I could be in written correspondence with you amateurs.
I hope you realise how lucky you all are.


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## Trevanion (3 Mar 2020)

Bm101":2zsre2hu said:


> And then there's the likes of me. How utterly amazing that I could be in written correspondence with you amateurs.
> I hope you realise how lucky you all are.



 The man who popularised googly eyes on newel posts himself!


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## Bm101 (3 Mar 2020)




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## FatmanG (4 Mar 2020)

Mike watching your shed build and then this staircase is not only a great source of learning to myself and others but also very inspirational. Your work ethic attention to detail and then document and photograph for UKW stands you out as a pretty special fella. Your a credit to this forum sir.
Thanks and =D> =D>


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## MikeG. (4 Mar 2020)

Thanks FMG. Tell that to the moderators, who want rid of me.

You must have missed my porch build, my favourite thread of all. :lol:


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## FatmanG (4 Mar 2020)

I have missed the porch build that's my next viewing sorted. 
Its a shame if the mods do want rid of you. I don't think you suffer fools gladly do you? If its down to conflict Mike first sign of any then just ignore and move on. Arguing with faceless people is futile you can't win. 
Anyway I hope you don't do a Jacob and vanish unlike him you would be missed


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## Trainee neophyte (4 Mar 2020)

As an indication of your worth: I flattened a piece of wood with a hand plane yesterday. All your fault/inspiration. I have owned the plane since I was 7 years old, and it was the very fist time I used it as intended. Because of this site, and your posts would rank highly amongst the sources of inspiration, I actually now know how to sharpen the plane, possibly how to put it back together, and how and why to plane the wood itself. You did that - perhaps trivial, but quite a big deal for me.

Accept any plaudits offered, because life never gives you enough praise or recognition. I know this


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## MikeG. (16 Mar 2020)

The next job was to put a little trim under the overhang of each tread, at both the front and the sides. I gathered up all the trimmings from when I had cut up the original boards, and ripped them and thicknessed them to size:











I used a simple cove bit to make the moulding on my router table:
















I hate mitres. I don't know if I've mentioned it. Anyway, not only do these mouldings need a mitre at the corner, but they also need one at the end:






The tiny little end return caused me a headache, but in the end the hot melt glue gun solved the problem:
















I position on the stair the moulding is glued and pinned all round, so there is no strength needed in the mitre.

I don't seem to have taken a photo of fitting them, but this later photo shows the moulding in place:






The bottom step, you may recall, is a bull nose. It has a curve with a very tight radius. I thought I would try a combination of kerfing and steaming to bend the moulding around it:





















Oh well! Turns out you need to be lying on the floor to see the lack of moulding under the bottom step, so there isn't one.

-

On to the ballustrading on the landing. This had to be done in conjunction with the apron around the floor edge, because access wouldn't be possible to do the latter once the ballustrade was in place. As with the handrail on the stair itself, there will be individual mortises for each balluster. Unlike the stair handrail, though, they can be done with a router and a jig because the mortise is at right angles, not pitched. I made a quick wedged jig:





















I spent rather a lot of time laying out the positions of the ballusters, then set to with the router:






Transferring the base board setting out to the handrail:






That's the base board (no idea what it's called). The underside of the handrails was a bit more complex, in that there were sloped side. This meant the jig couldn't reference the sides, nor could it be wedged. So I ended up screwing it in place each time. No big deal:






Then I could shape the handrails, all with a plane:











Mitres. I love mitres, more than I can say. My love is justified, as we'll see soon enough:











The tenons on the ends of the handrail for joining the newels needed doing next. There was a bit of to-ing and fro-ing to the house for measurements, because the old walls taking the half-newels weren't vertical. Anyway, I thought I would lay out visually how Mike's Rule of Halves works when chiseling. This is such beautiful straight grained timber that I was only ever going to make the tenons with a chisel:






I've already chiseled away the left hand cheek, and quickly marked up on the RH one where roughly I'll chisel., halving the distance to the gauge line with each cut. This allows you to sneak up on the line, reading the grain. If it looks like the cleave is going to dive under the line, you just come in from the side and persuade it to your way of thinking. Seconds of a job:






At the other end of the handrail sections, there are some lovely, lovely mitres. I thought I would add some floating tongues for a bit of strength and to help with alignment, but as I was planning to round the corners they turned out to be a bit smaller than I'd have liked:











I glued everything up and clamped them in the usual way:






Whilst they were drying I cleaned up the round corners of the balluster mortises, and joined the mitres of the base boards:
















And applied a coat of finish to the ballusters:






Came out well, the handrail mitres. Time to hack them to shape:











Actually, they cleaned up pretty well. Obviously the profile doesn't run true around the curve. In commercial handrail kits the corner piece isn't a mitre, and the profile runs around the curve perfectly. Never mind, at least it will stop people bruising their hip when they misjudge the corner in the dark.Time to go inside.....

Setting out the baseboard locations:






This half newel is against a twisted oak post, so needed profiling until it could sit against the wall:






I also drilled it for its fixings. Normally I would use a spade bit, but I couldn't find the right one. Out with the brace:






Dry fit:






That went all right. What could possibly go wrong? Time to glue everything together:






And put it in place:






Great!! That's one done. On to the other side. Oh, hang on a sec:






I love mitres, with all my being. I love them more than life itself. I grabbed a whole lot of clamps, bits of wood, towels, ratchet straps, and then sloshed a whole lot of glue around. Don't forget, there's glue drying:











Whilst that was drying, and with the clamp taking chunks out of me every time I went on the stair, I got on with the other side:











That's a dry fit, because I needed to do the apron before fixing this in place. Doing the dry fit enabled me to take all the necessary measurements. Here's what needs covering:






And the other side:






Back out to the workshop:

I needed the apron to be thinner than the baseboard, so I ripped a piece of wood up:






That's a lovely illustration of the tension that can be found inside a perfectly straight piece of harmless looking timber. After cleaning the pieces up I glued them together, and the curves meant quite a few clamps:











Trimmed up and fixed in place, with the handrail now fixed in permanently:






The other side worked out quite neatly too:






At least it has held together, but that mitre will need a bit of filling:


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## MikeG. (16 Mar 2020)

Next up was the cupboards. Plural. 

You've seen this photo before in another context, but have another look. This is the start of the understairs cupboards. This very clearly shows up the big issue with a cut string stair: the two strings have no common reference, so the straight string needed a lot of framing to provide a base for plasterboarding etc:











The first cupboard isn't going to start until the far side of the structural oak post just behind the stair. That framing leaves a really awkward little corner adjacent to the lounge doorway. Oh well, cottages are full of quirky little nooks and crannies:











It's not often that the scutch hammer gets an outing. This was a £1 bargain-bin purchase from the local hardware shop many moons ago. The (intentionally) rough plaster of the plinth needed some adjusting:






This enabled the framing to start. It's all in 2x2s and 2x1s:











That's a big lump of 6x2 in case I want to attach hooks or shelves to the upper part of the cupboard back wall in future. 

MDF isn't my favourite stuff, but the design team decided on a painted matching-board look to the understairs area ("there's too much wood already"). I couldn't properly locate the outside corner post of the cupboard without having the horizontal top edge of the front board meeting the sloped board correctly, so this was all done in something of a peculiar order:





















My wife was away for a few days, which meant I didn't have to tidy up at the close of play:






To get the look of matching board, first I tried my combination plane:






I know what failure looks like (it's usually mitred, but not this time), so I moved on to Plan B. The circular saw cut was about 3mm deep:






Then I took a file to the cuts at 45 degrees:






And then I cut a big hole in one of them:






Now you get the idea, I hope:






Ex 75x25 PAR door linings:






Now I need a door. I found an old piece of straightish pine, ripped from an old joist many years ago:
















I had a piece of 3 or 4mm MDF which I'd used as a template for my front door a while back. That would do nicely for the back of my hollow-core door:






The neat thing about my newish saw horses is that the feet fit under my bench better than the old ones, so workholding on larger pieces is quick and easy. I simply have no idea how a workshop without saw horses could ever work:






Most of this door was made on the horses:
















What a complete stroke of luck: it fits!!
















The last couple of photos also hint at the plastering that happened in the vicinity. There was actually quite a lot, with the inside of the cupboard, the stair soffit, the little nook to the side, and the adjacent ceiling and wall panels all being done. This meant lots of taping up of posts and beams beforehand.

The triangular secondary cupboard isn't complete, but will be some sort of wheeled trolley arrangement pulling out to reveal christmas decorations and slide projector etc. The broom cupboard is set back from the end of the stair to keep the hall feeling open, and because the turn to the lounge would have been gloomy and uninviting otherwise. I hate the green, and hope we can slather it in paint PDQ.

As a little reminder, this is what that view looked like 3 weeks ago:


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## That would work (16 Mar 2020)

To create a tongue groove and vee appearance.... a V shaped router bit would have done that somewhat easier? And by the way I simpathise re the green dust.


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## MikeG. (16 Mar 2020)

Probably, but I messed one up with a router a year or two back with a little mid-way wobble, and it rather put me off. You get a cleaner bottom to the cut with a circular saw.


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## That would work (16 Mar 2020)

Ah yes, the router certainly giveth but can taketh away in equal measure!


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## custard (16 Mar 2020)

Great post...an enjoyable and educational read, thanks for taking the effort to put this on line.

=D>


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## Trevanion (16 Mar 2020)

I can't help but notice that lovely door you've got in front of the staircase, Mike. Did you make it?


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## MikeG. (16 Mar 2020)

Yes, I did. There's a thread on it somewhere.

Edit.........Here you go. It's the third of the three doors.


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## Blackswanwood (16 Mar 2020)

I have really enjoyed following these posts Mike - thanks for sharing.


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## Trevanion (16 Mar 2020)

MikeG.":2v9f0y8c said:


> Edit.........Here you go. It's the third of the three doors.



A half-hour well spent! Excellent stuff. I don't know how I missed that thread.


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## Iestynd (17 Mar 2020)

=D> =D> =D> =D> 

Thanks for taking the time to write this up. Excellent reading, and fantastic work


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## Trigs (18 Mar 2020)

Great build Mike, screams quality. not sure if I've missed it though but what was the rough build time ?


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## MikeG. (18 Mar 2020)

I started it about a week before my first post, but obviously I haven't been on it full time. I sort-of kept a mental track of hours for a while, but lost count around 120. Bear in mind this includes plastering upstairs and down, other builder's work, and of course the understairs cupboard (unfinished).


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## flying haggis (18 Mar 2020)

you should have made your handrails in situ like these guys...

https://youtu.be/YTZix0SwmhQ

(like your stairs by the way)


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## MikeG. (20 Apr 2020)

I added the long-planned Tudor roses to the brackets:












Detailed description here.


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