Bob Riefer
07-29-2020, 2:48 PM
Well, I realize I'm a bit late to ask for advice as I'm nearly done with the effort, but I'm going to humbly ask anyways.
Here's how I went about this project (and it's been a total pain in the butt)....
- I had a bunch of scraps of cherry hanging around... not enough to do anything big with, so I decided to make it into a railing for our main stairs in our home.
- I jointed/planed/ripped all pieces to common width and thickness
- Used the cross cut sled to make a bunch of 2 foot lengths and a bunch of 3 foot lengths
- Glued up "components"... half the components had top and bottom layer at 3 foot (with middle layer at 2 foot, centered... creating a 6 inch "groove" on both ends), and the other half had top/bottom at 2 foot (with middle at 3 foot, centered... creating a 6 inch "tongue" at both ends). As components are joined together later, there will be a 6" overlap for glue.
- Ripped and planed components to remove any unevenness from glue up step etc.
---this is where I'm at so far---
---next planned steps are---
- Cut a slight taper in each component (so that bottom side is thinner than top side), and round over top edges
- Join all components together (total length is 14 feet), cut to finish length, sand/finish/install.
Now, I think the end result will look nice in our home, but I must have really done this the newbie way. It was really hard to keep everything nicely aligned, to hit perfect 6" overlaps, etc. And any project where I'm relying on sandpaper to help me get it right feels like I was just not accurate enough along the way. It was all just way harder than anticipated.
Please teach me....
Here's how I went about this project (and it's been a total pain in the butt)....
- I had a bunch of scraps of cherry hanging around... not enough to do anything big with, so I decided to make it into a railing for our main stairs in our home.
- I jointed/planed/ripped all pieces to common width and thickness
- Used the cross cut sled to make a bunch of 2 foot lengths and a bunch of 3 foot lengths
- Glued up "components"... half the components had top and bottom layer at 3 foot (with middle layer at 2 foot, centered... creating a 6 inch "groove" on both ends), and the other half had top/bottom at 2 foot (with middle at 3 foot, centered... creating a 6 inch "tongue" at both ends). As components are joined together later, there will be a 6" overlap for glue.
- Ripped and planed components to remove any unevenness from glue up step etc.
---this is where I'm at so far---
---next planned steps are---
- Cut a slight taper in each component (so that bottom side is thinner than top side), and round over top edges
- Join all components together (total length is 14 feet), cut to finish length, sand/finish/install.
Now, I think the end result will look nice in our home, but I must have really done this the newbie way. It was really hard to keep everything nicely aligned, to hit perfect 6" overlaps, etc. And any project where I'm relying on sandpaper to help me get it right feels like I was just not accurate enough along the way. It was all just way harder than anticipated.
Please teach me....