Everything is level and the mortices are nice and tight. They are draw-bored, so that hammering the pins in pulls them a little bit closer together. The hole in the tenon is set slightly closer to the newel post than the holes in the morticed newel post. The pins have to be hit very hard to get them to go in the way they should, and I broke a couple before perfecting the technique. A lttle bit of glue helps to act as a lubricant.
The wooden pins in the mortices have been cut off flush. It was a revelation to find that there's a special flexible saw for doing this, with teeth that are set only to one side so it doesn't scratch the surface of the wood.
The underside will eventually be planked over, so almost nothing here will show:
The last picture shows how the wedges go - and they go in after being walloped very hard indeed: it's all oak so nothing splits ....
I think the vertical wedges for the risers need to be pinned in place, or else they could work loose. The horizontal ones are partly held there by the risers, but I'll pin those too. I plan to leave the stairs open like this until the end of the summer, when I'll give the wedges another good whack with the club hammer. There will probably be a bit of shrinkage and that should take it up. Anything after that will just have to be a normal consequence of timber construction.
No comments:
Post a Comment