Finished handrails....pics

[oohsam]

Hey yall.
Check out pics. Stained the handrails (cypress pine) with cabots. Just finished the balaustrading. Pretty happy with the result so far. Just in the process of building stes and then i'll oil the deck. Im a bit worried about how dark it will turn out as the oil is very dark orange....

The top of the handrail is hardwood.

[Dr - 307]

You should be proud rrre! Top effort.
The orangey color is something I don't like. And i think you were also concerned about it.
But once again, great effort mate.
Cheers,
Doc.

[pawnhead]

Looks fantastic oohsam.
You are going to put another decking board at the end, (cut around the posts) aren't you?

[digg]

Heres my effort ... the orange is not deliberate ...it's cabots decking oil Jarrah ... but it grows on ya

[oohsam]

Looks fantastic oohsam.
You are going to put another decking board at the end, (cut around the posts) aren't you?

Thanks guys!
Pawnhead - good pickup LoL, yes I am putting another deckboard around that. The space on the end is 100mm, so I'll be trimming down a 140mm wide board. I left that board off for now becuase I have bought some deck lights, that will be going along the edge of the deck, on that board. Should look good when it lights up onto the balustrade..

Thanks heaps for the praise guys. Im pretty proud. Just finished building the support for my step. The boards will go onto it tomorrow.

Will post more pics up.

[pawnhead]

I'd just leave it at 140mm (to match the rest), cut it around the posts, and let it overhang. It's not as if anyone will be walking on the outside edge.

[oohsam]

Wont it cupp? Im worried that the edge will cupp if its not screwed down...Hmm...

[Spelunx]

Wont it cupp? Im worried that the edge will cupp if its not screwed down...Hmm...

It looks like you will have plenty of room to nail down a full-width board there. A little bit of overhang will not lead to cupping, as long as you can put two nails in the board, it will be fine.

[oohsam]

That is what I will do then! Thanks for the advice.

[russall]

Looks great oohsam, can I ask, what did you use for the handrail?

I'm looking for something that is 100mm wide and very straight for my deck.

[oohsam]

The top of thehand rail, I have no idea what timber it was but i know it was expensive. Its 140mm x 45mm. It was just labelled at bunnings as construction hardwood. It was 17 bux a meter. I only got this timber as opposed to pine as there was no flex in the timber. My posts are 2.4 meteres apart and the pine flexed, however this hardwood did not.

I hope that helps.

[BustedThumbs]

I'm about to put up some steel wire balustrade. Do you have any red hot tips? What spacing did you use?

Mike

[russall]

Thanks oohsam, I was sold 140m pre primeddoor jam, which I painted, but now has sap coming out of itin places. I'm not too fussed as I want to replace it with something that is 100mm, same as all teh posts...

As for the wire work, I did mine last weekend adn I think it worked out well, I had no less than 100mm gap beteen the wire as my deck is more than 2m off the ground.

As for tips, getting consistent lengths make it look much neater. I pre drilled all holes and screwed in all the "hoops" at each end.

I wound out all of the jaw/jaw rigs out to about 80% and made sure they were all fairly even.
The rigs were on the left hand side of the deck, so from the spool of wire I fed through the holes from left to right and swagged up the non exciting end first.
Then with the rig attached to the post and would out about 80% I pulled the wire out tight and held it up against the jaw jaw rig to work out where to cut. For mine I found the sweet spot was just after the thread over jaw/jaw rig. I cut the wire there, swagged it up and then wound it tight. The reason for finding the sweet spot and having the rigs all would out to the same place is so that when its all in place all the rigs should hopefully line up nicly once tightened.
I think it took my first bottom 3 runs to find the "sweet spot"

Also to keep things looking level I drilled all through post holes from each side. The wire is quite forgiving and pokes through the holes well, about 4/10 gave me grief and the method I used was sending a slightly bigger drill bit in there and gave it a wiggle. For my 3.2m wire I used a 4mm drill bit. For 2 holes I had to bring out the 5mm bit. End result, you cannot really see the difference.

Hope this made sense.