Just made and installed a curved handrail (pictures)

[Dave Shively]

I have been away for a while due to some surgery and taking care of my
wife who has not felt well in months. Anyway this is a handrail which I
just finished for a customer in their new home. I only made the short one
not the one that goes upstairs. I also did not make the starting end cap,
it was given to me by the homeowner and I had the fun part of trying to
match it's profile. It may seem like an easy feat, but trying to match it up
with router bits from a catalog or from the internet took some doing. I did
the best I could and came up with a fairly close match. I first glued up
three layers of 7/8" red oak and rough cut a 1/16" wider on both sides.
I then used some MDF and made a template and filed and sanded to get
a smooth and "perfect" copy. I then used double sided tape to hold the
MDF to the rough handrail so I could route it with a pattern bit. When it
came time to route the actual profile the rail was to narrow for the router
base and if it tilted any the whole piece would be shot. So I quickly tie
strapped a scrap piece of rail the same thickness to the other side of the
router and it worked fine. I then used a pocket screw and a 1/2" dowell
to join the end cap and the rail together. The two did not quite match up
but with some filing and sanding it came out great! All that was left was to
drill a bunch of holes through their nice new hardwood oak flooring to install
it. Even though it was a small project it was a lot of fun. Thanks for looking.

Dave

http://pic15.picturetrail.com/VOL573/3197729/6523784/224349762.jpg
http://pic15.picturetrail.com/VOL573/3197729/6523784/224339500.jpg
http://pic15.picturetrail.com/VOL573/3197729/6523784/224339474.jpg
http://pic15.picturetrail.com/VOL573/3197729/6523784/224339455.jpg
http://pic15.picturetrail.com/VOL573/3197729/6523784/224339424.jpg
http://pic15.picturetrail.com/VOL573/3197729/6523784/224339412.jpg
http://pic15.picturetrail.com/VOL573/3197729/6523784/224339338.jpg
http://pic15.picturetrail.com/VOL573/3197729/6523784/224339319.jpg
http://pic15.picturetrail.com/VOL573/3197729/6523784/224339303.jpg
http://pic15.picturetrail.com/VOL573/3197729/6523784/224339246.jpg

[Dave Shively]

Here are the last two pictures.

Dave

http://pic15.picturetrail.com/VOL573/3197729/6523784/224339221.jpg
http://pic15.picturetrail.com/VOL573/3197729/6523784/224339193.jpg

[Neil Bosdet]

Great work Dave! I'm starting to get requests for the same type of stuff. I would have loved to help you with this one to sort out some of the "niggly" questions that seem to perplex me. Great photos!

[Jim Becker]

Wow...that's like...real work! Nice job, Dave!

[Chris Rosenberger]

You did good Dave.

[Dave Shively]

I for got to add the bit came from MLCS. It was the only one that came close to matching the orignal profile. I also bought a thumbnail
roundover bit made for the top of handrails, but it was not even
close so I used a 3/4" radius bit. This worked pretty good but as I said before, I had to do a lot of small filing and sanding to make them match. Also when using the large handrail bit, it took
off a lot of meat at one time and caused big chunks to chip out.
To stop this I bought two larger diameter pilot bearing, 3/4" and
a 5/8" and used them from largest to smallest. I ended up with
the original 1/2" bearing and had no chip outs.

Dave

http://pic15.picturetrail.com/VOL573/3197729/6523784/224444949.jpg

[Jeffrey Makiel]

Looks pretty darn good! A cleanly executed job.

I'm always impressed at the amount of work and skill it takes to make such a graceful railing. I've never tackled anything close to what is shown in your pictures. But even the straight forward non-curving railings are a challenge.

Again, nice work!

-Jeff :)

[Alex Berkovsky]

Richard Wolf? is that you? :D j/k. Excellent job, Dave. I hope you and your wife are feeling better.

[Richard Wolf]

Richard Wolf? is that you? :D j/k.

No Alex, not me. Nice job Dave. That's a big bit to swing in a hand held router.

Richard

[Steve Clardy]

Looks great Dave!!!