Hi Bob,

Here’s wishing you a great 2018 and hope you enjoy making this impressive stair.

Your Christmas sounds like a lot of work.

I attach the pdf files so you can get an idea of the project.

I’m ready to look into the details and help optimise it when you are ready.

All the best,

Ness

Great, see you Monday.

Have a great week end,

best,

Ness

Hi Bob,

Sorry but having not seen your reply before this morning, I haven’t been able to pick you up today.

Can we meet up Monday at 4pm ?

best regards,

Ness

Hi Bob,

Thanks for all the documents you posted for your project.

This looks like a very interesting job, that if I had time would happily make for you!

A few of the questions and remarks that come to mind……

My first remark would be that this is a very ambitious project even for a seasoned specialised stair carpenter and builder.

So if you are not an experienced stair builder be prepared to spend a LOT effort, time and head scratching building this stair.

With this said, 

Even if you can get and approximation to the wreathed volute from Dresser mouldings, the quarter turn wreathed handrail will have to be built custom built either in solid wood with tangent handrailing or laminated. If you used one of our laminated techniques set up and construction will be much faster and easier.

Standard volutes from Dressers are not wreathed and only curved and flat mouldings joined to approximate a wreath. The final result is in MHO very disappointing and it would really be a pity not to also correctly wreath the starting volute on your stair. This will of course require extra work but very little extra compared to the total time spent on the project. 

Are you looking to build the steps and riser in the traditional way as in the Radford’s Cylopedia with mitred nosings and brackets? although this is time consuming it’s fairly straight forwards to do this on the straight steps,

However,  the curved and mitred mouldings on the wreathed strings, although not impossible, is going to be more complicated.

If the stair is painted you might find it much easier to make the steps over lapping the cut string and ends moulded directly cut on the step ends with a router with eventually a moulding nailed under the step. Using horizontal laminates the outer veneer can easily be scribed around the return moulding to give exactly the same effect as the traditional stair

The best techniques for this stair would be:

– Solid wood wall string, (one piece, 3 part stringer is not necessary)

– Horizontal laminates for the wreathed section of the outer cut string

– Solid wood (support beam with assembled step brackets) for the rake sections of the outer cut string

– Solid wood (same construction as the raked sections of the outer cut string) for central support string.

– Solid wood for volute

– Solid wood for the rake handrails

– Solid wood using tangent handrailing or laminated sections for volute to rake wreath and quarter turn wreathed handrail

– Solid wood for the rake to landing handrails.

– Horizontal laminates for the bull nose first step.

These would be the general construction techniques that I’d strongly suggest.

After this we’ll need to have the exact wood sections that will be used to build the different parts and we can start working on the (numerous) details

It would be good to talk through this over a Team Viewer session if you have time tomorrow or Friday.

All the best,

Ness