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Building a Custom Stair Railing

Bob visits with carpenter Kenney to look at stair details. Kenney shows Bob how to add strength and rigidity to the railing through the use of a mortise joint. He uses a biscuit joiner to make easy work of the cutting.

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Building a Playground, Part One

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Building a Custom Stair Railing

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Custom Built-in Bookshelf Unit

Clip Transcript For:

Building a Custom Stair Railing

computer-generated transcript - may not be 100% accurate

" What kind of oaks?"

" It's a red oak Bob."

" It's red oak, right? And you've got your [unk] board in place and of course you newel post."

" Right."

" And you're working on the railing huh?"

" Yup. Get ready to mount it now."

" And how does it get mounted up there? It is a mortise fit I take it?"

" Yeah, we're gonna put a [unk] biscuit in there and then we're gonna screw and plug."

" Uh huh! So, a biscuit is this [unk] there,"

" Uh huh."

" which simply gets fitted in here, and then the other half fits into the newel post----"

" Yeah."

" And that's what gives it the joint its strength."

" How do you cut that out?"

" Use a stool here just to join them. Just line up a center mark, which is on the----"

" Uh huh."

" fence."

" Uh huh."

" And the blade just cuts out the mortars right there."

" Right, let see you do it."

" Sure."

" Alright, let me handed up to you. This and it goes away. And we dry fit it first right?"

" Yeah. We give it a dry fit to make sure it works. And the biscuit goes into the newel post."

" Yup."

" Just put the other side into the gutter."

" Yeah."

" Looks nice and clean there."

" How is it look at the top Wayne?"

" Beautiful."

" Alright, so you got some glue that up while we continue our tour. Alright. Well, that's gonna look beautiful. Actually, it's gonna look very similar to the detailing that you see here on this railing along the bridge area, which is again all done in oak and they've simply added the square baluster stock. And they've taken a lot care in putting this together. It's a nice installation if you'll noticed the fasteners that go back and reenter to this post have been plugged up with matching oak, so that when it's all finish, they'll let look like furniture. "

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