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Building the Porch Rail

The carpenter shows Bob the railing on the deck off the master bedroom. Explaining that code requires it to be 36 inches tall. The carpenter then builds a piece of railing from scratch. Explaining how to line up the holes and pre-drill them to insure a quality job. He also hides all of the galvanized screws and nails by putting them on the bottom side of each piece.
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Building the Porch Rail

  computer-generated transcript - may not be 100% accurate

" This is very nice Larry, very clean looking what kind of stock is it?"

" Well the top and bottom rail Bob is Douglas Fur [unk] and the--"

" -Straight grain right?"

" Right. The balusters here are straight grain seeder with a 4 inch space in it. They have--"

" -Clear seeder"

" -Yes, clear seeder correct. They have to meet a code requirement here being up on the second floor is, you know, we're above the kitchen"

" -Yes."

" -the wall with this rubber roof on top of it and we're about 12 feet off the ground so"

" You gotta to have a safe railing--"

" -Yes"

" coz the code requires let's see--"

" -you have to have"

" what, minimum height of 36 inches off the"

" fourth floor"

" finished deck"

" Yes."

" isn't here yet"

" Right"

" obviously"

" and then what about the spacing in between the spindles or balusters? "

" They have to be a minimum of 9 inches, perpendicular to the baluster itself but we chose 4 inches just because it looks better actually and"

" Well it a very--"

" -It's more sturdy too"

" -clean looking contemporary design and what I love about it is that that kind of woods you've chosen really take the weather very, very well. Now,"

" Yes, absolutely."

" Why don't you show us how you build it?"

" Okay, well these pieces right here are what I'm laying out for the balusters and what we do is--"

" -These are rails?"

" -Well these are the, the this piece that attaches of the rail, actually, it holds the balusters together. See we like to see have screws, and nails coming up the bottom"

" Okay."

" What, I will explain that a minute. But what we have to do here is lay it out. I have a 4 inch space here so I made a block which, which is 5 and a half inches long because the baluster itself is an inch and a half."

" Okay."

" So what we do is we line these up. We've already got that, that point there, so I put a mark here and here. Next, slide over, mark here, here. Next, and I take this square. And what we'll do is install the baluster right on these two pieces and then put the top and bottom rail on it afterwards."

" Okay. Let's see how you assembly it."

" Next step Bob, is we lay these down and the exes are right next to each other as you see--"

" -Right."

" -Spread them out here--"

" -Sure"

" Take a baluster and--"

" -We are gonna be shooting them."

" -line them up. All right Kenny, we shoot them with two 2 inch galvanized finish nails"

" Yes, and they're all glued together but they're literally 2 inch finish nails"

" Yes"

" and they go right into place."

" That's right."

" And after the nails go in we'll pre-drill some holes in the end and put a 2 inch galvanized screw in will really hold it together."

" Oh is that right?"

" Yes."

" Yes well, the beauty of doing it like this is when its complete you won't see any of the nail ends."

" Nails or no you won't see anything. Plus it will prevent them from twisting over time"

" Yes."

" and what not which is refine them a lot of porch rails a lot"

" Right."

" That's pretty clever you're just holding them in place with the other rail"

" Otherwise it all fall down"

" Yes."

" So we line those up and shoot them from up top."

" Now what size screws is it are these that we're using here?"

" We're using 2 inch galvanized screws."

" And it's not overkill? I mean, do you really need this in addition to the nails?"

" Well it, it helps makes it helps snug the wood up real good coz over time, it will swell and contract and what not."

" Yes, even with a finish on it."

" Right."

" So this will secure that it won't travel, it won't warp."

" This 2 by 4 which you've, basically you cut this on the table saw, right?"

" That's right Bob."

" And what what do you call that the that board that you could got clamped on with all the saw cuts?"

" It's call the feather board and what it does is it holds the wood to the table so that this champer right here will be nice and even and smooth all the way down."

" Okay."

" Now this being the top rail, we're going screw from the bottom with an inch and a quarter screws and you're going to help us fold it on this line right here Bob, you can see the line right here."

" Yup there it is."

" Now you're going to line up the center, okay Kenny."

" Yup."

" Now the, the reason why we're screwing from the bottom here on the top rail so that you don't see any hardware, you know, screw heads or nails or--"

" -Right."

" -anything of the such."

" And now we basically we do the exact same thing on the other end on the bottom?"

" Basically but from the, we screw from bottom on this one--"

" -Right."

" -The bottom of the bottom rail. We've already pre-drilled the holes. I'll get out of the way here."

" A little slow."

" Yes."

" Okay.--"

" -Okay Ken."

" Now this is really finish work that we're doing here and you guy have to be really careful with the stock don't you?"

" Well what we want to do is get our premade panel in place and wrap it down. What we've done is we pre-drilled our hole, Bob because as you know, we we tried to not show any nails or screws so we pre-drilled at an angle from underneath here."

" Right."

" And we're gonna install some galvanized screws into the post--"

" Yes, but it's extremely important to pre-drill these holes coz otherwise, you can check and split that"

" Yes."

" wood at the end and then you'd want to shot yourself."

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