Balluster Fitting

With the handrail permanently fixed in place, the balusters can now be fitted. Starting at the bottom of the stairs a small fillet of timber is cut as a spacer to fit in the channel in the base rail, and another in the u-channel underside of the handrail. These are sized to make the baluster vertical and are glued and clamped in place. Each baluster is cut to length with an appropriate mitre at each end and then glued in place, pulled into position with a few elastic bands while the glue sets :

Once past the bottom bend, in theory I could mass produce the fillets on the chop saw and then fit the balusters in rapid succession. However, I was not confident that I would get the sizing right and did not want to introduce a small error that gets the balusters out of vertical. My thought was that this could lead to a cumulative effect. 1mm error in each one could mean the top one being 13mm off of vertical and this would be very noticeable. Instead, I cut the bottom fillets in mass production mode, but measured each of the top ones individually.



I have to confess here that I made a fundamental error with my measuring and calculating of the gaps. First off I forgot to allow for the thickness of the wood, only the gaps, and then I translated a horizontal measurement into a measurement on the pitch line. The upshot is that I used one more baluster than I should have, and the gap varies subtly in order to finish off in the right place without a final gap that was very large or very small. The extra baluster has been "borrowed" from the kit for the landing, so I may end up one short (though I think I ordered at least one extra).