Continuous handrail

[richarnold]

I had a go at one section of a handrail turn towards the end of college. It was somewhat restricted by the lecturers not having experience of the task, but after much discussion, geometry, setting out, drawing, head scratching the line that stood out in a book came at the end of an exhaustive chapter of handrailing (I'm sorry not to remember the source) was:

[paraphrase] "The master handrailer will sculpt the rail until it is right to eye and hand"

That about sums it up for me :lol:
I also had the same experience at college over 30 years ago. over 2 weeks of technical drawing to produce two templates, then an afternoon in the workshop actually making it :?: I remember thinking at the time that if I ever had to do it again I would just get a block of wood and just hack it out by eye :lol: I have since had the pleasure of doing two contracts for clients that required handrail wreaths. One of them was well documented on this forum.handrail-wreath-update-t63489.html This second one was a little more complicated as I did not have a metal rail to follow this time so an upright cylinder was made that corresponded to the curve of the string, and the rise and go was plotted out on its face.
From this you can produce an elliptical template, which I used to mark out the vertical surface of the rail. This surface was then worked with draw knife, and spokeshave, until it fits the surface of the cylinder.
once one reference surface is achieved, the rest follow on without much trouble. I find it helpful to fix a piece of the finished rail section to both ends to give a guide. . I was useless at math's at school, but I don't think you really need all that knowledge to make wreaths, and I'm sure the craftsmen of the 18th and 19th century worked it out at the bench in much the same way.
So called thumb planes are very useful for forming the mouldings, but not that easy to come by. Most of them seem to be craftsman made. grinding profiles into old bits of hacksaw blade works well. Just use them as small hand held scratch stocks to tidy up the fine details.
Cheers Richard

 

[owenmcc]

Richard: I'm glad I'm not the only one to have suffered the effort of misplaced geometry.

In my travels this year, the 'make an internal frame and work to that' method seemed to be the preferred option. One of the joiners had a background in carving and went for band saw roughing out and hand tool finishing. The other had a background on the continent and mentioned something in between coughs about a propped up spindle moulder, a step ladder and some jigs.

 

[PAC1]

It is easy to get hung up on the geometry and convince yourself that all these tangents etc are too difficult. It is really about form as I said earlier have a look at the articles about designing and carving volutes on Thisiscarpentry. I found them far more understandable than the mathematical formula for the same

 

[bugbear]

Love it - 3D non uniform compound curves need 3D non uniform compound layout surfaces.

BugBear

 

[Jacob]

..... an upright cylinder was made that corresponded to the curve of the string, and the rise and go was plotted out on its face........
From this you can produce an elliptical template, which I used to mark out the vertical surface of the rail. This surface was then worked with draw knife, and spokeshave, until it fits the surface of the cylinder.......

As far as I understand it the graphical methods described everywhere do just the same but by "projection" without having to construct a former of any sort. But unless you are at it regularly I guess your constructed method is going to be more accessible.

 

[AndyT]

The thing I find most frustrating about the old books is that they have pages and pages of geometry but almost nothing about the tools used or how to cut the strange shapes required. Ellis is an exception and has a paragraph about the tools and a few pictures, but presumably expected his readers to be working for someone who would show them what to do.

So thanks to Richard and Owen for the practical approach!

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Owenmcc says he was restricted by his lecturer having no experience - I wonder how many other subjects this applies to? I found an old book on the use of roofing squares so I gave it to my neighbour (an extremely good joiner), who lectured at the local college. He leafed through it saying - Brilliant! It'll be so useful - I've got to lecture about the use of these next week - and I've never actually used one. So many off these things are so much easier if you are taught face to face by someone who can actually DO the job rather than reading books, no matter how good they are.