This was a challenge. Two staircases, four floors  (8 runs) of railings. The contractor called us less than a month before the customer was due to move in. The rail had to encase a 1/2″ x 1″ bronze channel that was supposed to be done before we got there. It wasn’t. The iron guy was new at it and we made him redo about 80% of it due to uneven curves or it being out of level.   If the ironwork isn’t level the railing profile will be distorted.

There are no easements or newel posts so the railing had to be continuous from top to bottom. The joints were to be smooth. The idea was to be able to put your hand on the railing at the top and never let go until you get to the bottom, while never feeling joints on the way down. All of the joints were done with  5/16″ rail bolts. We had a bandsaw, several routers, router jigs, custom router bits and lots of hand tools on site. We worked for about 21 days to finish on time. These pictures are with the railing having only one sealer coat. If you’ve seen our post about making curved handrailing you’ll know that Mike spent many days just fitting the blanks onto the bronze channel before we were able to do any shaping.

This cabinet was designed to stand between the aromatic red cedar entry doors and the walnut entertainment center,  so we chose to use both woods in its design.  Its footprint is hexagonal to mimic the floor plan of the room and the custom entry door handles.

The walnut stiles have been plowed out with a custom router bit to trap the 3/8″ rope lighting which runs continuously through the cabinet (about 45 feet). The  3/4″ shelves have 1-1/2″ solid edges made up of walnut and aromatic red cedar, coved down to a 3/8″ thickness at the outside edge to give a lighter appearance.  The pair of doors have a tongue and groove astrigal to insure that they stay aligned and to prevent light leaks. They are held closed with rare earth magnets.  Some things we especially like about this unit are the hand turned walnut and aromatic red cedar dimmer switch knob and my walnut and cedar acorn door pulls.

Also in this house are about seventy feet of straight handrailing, and the handrailing for a spiral staircase. You can see construction details on this particular spiral staircase in the “How We Do It” section. The spiral was handcarved, as were the railing ends. There are also a few locations where the spindles go through the handrailing. These details required a lot of specialty hand work. Also note that the spiral changes directions at the top.

This was a wonderful project. While Wally was building cabinetry for the job, Marc fabricated and carved 7 gothic transoms for Trinity Church at the foot of Broadway in New York.
The anti rooms were dark and working with the New York Historical Society we designed new interior sash to replace the solid panels above the doors. The originals had carved sash on the outside applied to solid panels (as seen in the first picture above).
Working with solid white oak the sub frames were built and carved, then the “rope” molding was carved and applied. Interior casings and drip sills were also made.
On site, the existing panels were cut out and routed to accept ½” thermopane glass, which was sandwiched between the old and new.
There were so many hand cut nails in the panels, several router bits were destroyed in the process.
It broke our hearts to see this wonderful old historic church covered in ashes after the attacks of 9/11/01.

Most companies now use laminated bendable material to make spiral staircase handrailing. We still make ours using traditional methods, and it makes a big difference in the end product. See how this was done in the “How We Do It” section. More pictures of this railing are located in the “Loft” section under “Our Work”. Also to the right is a hand carved vollute in antique longleaf yellow pine.