Restoration Railing

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dealguy11
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Restoration Railing

Post by dealguy11 »

A local contracting company dropped off the white railing shown in the picture from a local historical building and asked us to make a copy because one was too damaged to fix. They were originally hand-made about 150 years ago - no 2 measurements are the same anywhere on the piece, so it was a matter of picking some that seemed right. I modeled the top and bottom rails in Sketchup, then imported that into Aspire. We used Aspire's slicing function to create the top railing, with the multiple curves. On the bottom rail, we pocketed out square mortises for each spindle to position them precisely. Then, although we could have turned the spindles on our lathe, I decided to turn all the spindles on my rotary axis, using Aspire to lay out the 2-rail sweep. We ran them as fast as the rotary would allow, but could have done them faster by hand. Each spindle took 40 minutes or so. The benefit of doing them with Aspire is that they all came out the same. The edge profile on the bottom of the railings, and the dado on the bottom of the the top rail were hand-routed in.

The railing was done in Spanish cedar and is held together with waterproof glue and screws. With a few coats of oil paint, hopefully it will last another 150 years!
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Steve Godding
Not all who wander (or wonder) are lost

4DThinker
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Re: Restoration Railing

Post by 4DThinker »

Nice work, and the perfect kind of project to show off one potential of CNCing. I'd love to see a photo after pain and installation. Houses with that kind of detail just don't exist where I live.

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dhellew2
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Re: Restoration Railing

Post by dhellew2 »

Nice job Steve. The CNC makes the cutting easier, but it is still the artist that creates. Dale
You will get old if you live long enough!
Young = time, no money
Old = money, no time
Dale

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bill_w
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Re: Restoration Railing

Post by bill_w »

Excellent work well done, I'm sure it will make another 150 years.
Computers-Yuk....I should junk it...It never does what it should do...only what I tell it.

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