P G Wake

Oak staircase #1

June 29th, 2009 by Peter

Making an oak staircase

Even though the oak for this job arrived a few weeks ago, other than cut it down to near sizes little else has been done.

Since then other jobs have taken priority, after I finished the Newmarket lean-to I had intended to get the stairs done but then another small job came along, which turned out not so small at a kennels and cattery in Spalding but more on that later this week.

The first picture isn’t one of mine but from the Richard Burbidge catalogue and gives an idea as to what I am making, this is similar with the voluted hand rail end (the curly bits at the end) and the double rounded bottom step and even with the quarter landing although with less steps on the bottom bit the rest of the design differs from the one below.

Now you should always do drawings for anything made in the joinery workshop, but I was thinking back of all the staircases I have made over the years and worked it out to be around 20 all different, some with winders, some with landings and some straight sets in everything from standard softwood, Southern Yellow Pine, Oak and even Mahogany but only one I can think of did I do a drawing, most of it I design in my head and with pictures and sketches, the picture below is one of two sheets for this job.

As it is the design changed after I had ordered the wood and thought it was going to cost me a lot more in oak, but as it is the final design here is a mixture of a voluted open string stair as in the Richard Burbidge picture above and a closed string stair that you most likely have in your home with a string up either side of the treads and risers, this is also a chunky staircase with 32mm strings and treads and 20mm risers, no lightweight.

The main reason for this choice was the string timber is engineered timber, that is it had a core of many pieces wrapped in a veneer making the 4 mtr main strings more stable and less likely to twist, so to start cutting out open strings from this is asking for a lot of work and hassle, so closed strings it is, my only problem was how to finish the bottom string where it comes through to the voluted end, again the Richard Burbidge catalogue answered that one, but more on that later.

Most of the settings out I do in the workshop and start by making a template called a pitch square, I make one of these for every staircase I make then throw them away as they all differ in pitch, the tread and riser sizes are marked on it and aids marking out the strings (below).

Because timber always comes up a different size each time you buy it I make new templates every time, this includes the ones for routing out the string housings and to get a snug fit without wasting oak I use softwood to test out templates, this particular batch of timber was planed for me prior to delivery by Fenland Timber (thanks Mark your a star).

The one below is for the tread housing in the strings, the treads are 32mm finish so have a flat front with round corners so the housing needs to match.

Below is the finished test piece and as you can see took two attempts to get right, the first one was a fraction to tight.

After running the first tread with it’s round corners and checked in the housing this part of the job was ready for making to proper template to cut the oak strings.

As the router was set up for making the treads I did all the others as well as the top nosing and the bottom double ended step, now this template (below) was just done the old fashioned way with a hand made MDF template done by eye and a jigsaw and finished up with the sander.

Once cut out the round over was added to this as well, notice in the picture below the rounded edge doesn’t go all the way round as the back has the riser for the second tread behind it.