Barn conversion stairs

[Bodidly]

Wookey mentioned he wanted to know how the stairs are made so I will make a short thread here.

The core is a 80mm box section steel with short legs on the bottom to bridge around the underfloor heating pipes. At the top it bolts onto a large C section steel that holds up our balcony. This is then boxed in with maple and glued together with West system resin. I added the triangles that support the treads when the box was in place these are biscuit jointed to the maple taking great care to get the spacing precisely right. I am doing some pictures on sketchup but am very slow with this so I will post as I go along. I will try to explain the rest this evening. Here are a couple of pics, hope this works.

Beau

[Bodidly]

The treads are solid maple with many precise holes at various depths and diameters. The red parts of the drawing are some 25mm stainless steel washers (I am sorry this does not look very red but the computer is starting to struggle with 3d pictures and the program is free!) These are set flush with the tread. The dark grey is a threaded bar that runs inside the balustrade this is fastened at the top with the cones off some expanding bolts (I can't draw this) You can see the balustrades to the side these are sandwiched from the top to the bottom with some specially made nuts in photo. I could have used domed head nuts but these might have cut your head open when walking under the stairs.





The short section of balustrade has be a perfect fit between the upper and lower treads as this is what spreads the loads over several treads.

The treads are screwed, glued and plugged to the triangle sections in the drawing. I have used large Spax washer head screws.

I am sorry describing this is almost harder than making it.

I will post this now and explain about the handrail later. If this does not make sense just tell me and I will have another go

Beau

[Bodidly]

A close up of the 25mm washer.

The special nuts.

The cherry plugs over the Spax screws.

[desperate]

Beau, that stair looks a real peach, but I am intruigued how you got them passed the beyond comprehension (LABC), usually open tread stairs without a riser of any sort, don't comply with the "4 inch ball" regulation. Have you got some kind of clever invisible gizmo?

Brilliant work all over mate.

Desp

[Bodidly]

Hi Desp

You mean like this



The rules are bit of a pane. The glass is laminated.

Beau

[Bodidly]

The hardest bit about the handrail was drilling the holes at 42 degrees for the balustrades. If I had tried to do this onto the wood as it was the drill bit would have walked across the face making a right mess. The solution was to temporarily glue triangular blocks of wood to the handrail before it was rounded. So now I have a 60mm square section of wood with 21 triangular blocks stuck to it, then very carefully work out the spacing for holes and mark these on the triangles. To drill the holes I had my drill press tilted over to 42 degrees with wedges and bits of rope (this was proper bodgery) and drilled the holes with a forstner bit, once set up this was easy but looked ridiculous. Next I just cut off the wedges and planed back to the original square section.

Then I made a 45 degree jig for the thicknesser, now I could feed the section through to create an octagon. To finally make a round section I fitted the spindle  moulder with some 30mm radius cutters and the power feed. This final bit took some setting up but the machining took probably 30 minuets but weeks thinking about. I am chuffed with the result.




Beau

[wookey]

You sir, are a top-class creator of fine things :-)

I understood the description, and learned that I didn't actually properly understand what a baluster or a balustrade was until today. Just one thing I didn't quite get is how the top-fixing with the cones works?

(turns out that a blustrade is a row of posts/rods under a handrail, and each individual rod/post is a baluster - learn something every day).

[Bodidly]

Hi wookey
The cones just wedged into the end of the baluster tube as they are being pulled down tight buy the threaded bar that goes through the whole assembly. None of them slipped when tightening from underneath to my relief.

Beau