At long last, the stairs and railings are done. I put the final coat of finish on this afternoon and we are now ready for inspection. In total, the railings took about 3 weeks of build time, and the stairs about the same. If I had known just how much work would be required, I might have opted for a turnkey solution. On the other hand, the savings we realized could purchase a small new car. I am most appreciative of my gluing and finishing assistants, Jeanine and Nico.

After weeks of work all 150 balusters, 7 Newell posts, 4 hand rails, and 3 guard rails have been permanently installed. The final step was to glue top caps to the Newell posts. We are now officially ready for inspection by the building department and hope to have our occupancy permit shortly. Tomorrow, I will do some final sanding and finishing work and then move on to built-ins for our walk-in closets.

To maximally stabilize the Newell posts I am constructing for the River House, I decided to channel them through the end of the stair tread before fastening them to the floor. This adds a considerable amount of strength at the expense of a rather complicated mating joint with multiple critical dimensional tolerances. Machining these was possibly the most stressful work I have done on the house thus far The slightest mistake on either part would have resulted in a depressingly large amount of rework. I perfected my approach on scrap material before attempting the work on the final components and thankfully this led to a successful outcome.

I installed three out of seven Newell posts today. More accurately, I installed three-quarters of each post. I have left one side open so that I can secure the railings with a bolt driven from the inside. Tomorrow, I will glue on the missing face and top cap. The base is glued to a cleat that is the same size as the inside of the hollow post. The cleat is secured to the floor with a massive lag screw. If tomorrow goes smoothly, I should be finished with the railings by the end of Monday and we will then be ready for our certificte of occupancy inspection. Fingers crossed.

Thanks to our neighborhood list server, I was alerted to the approach of a bevy of swans, 13 in total. I was able to grab my good camera and photograph them as they swam past the house. Ice has begun to form near the banks but the bulk of the river is still flowing. If I had to guess, I would say they were having a leisurely swim, resting from what was likely several hundred miles of flying. Jeanine arrived at the house shortly after they passed by on the water but spotted them in the air as they resumed their migration.

I completed the last three railings for the staircase today by machining the holes needed to connect and secure the balusters to the rail. The anatomy of the rail is pictured below. The balusters are slid over the connector to mate with the rail at an angle of 32.5 degrees. The ends of the rails have a threaded metal insert that will accept a fastener to secure it to the Newell posts. One end of the rail has a 16.25 degree compound joint followed by a mitered right angle return. The rail itself was made by laminating non-overlapping 4 foot long sections of bamboo plywood together (for a perfect match to the stair treads).

Although my college degrees are in Electrical Engineering, it is only because the field of Computer Engineering was in its infancy. My primary concentration was in logic design and computer architecture. Even the most advanced computers today are still based on the same basic building blocks that perform the logical operations of AND, OR, and NOT. When I was in grade school, these logic elements were constructed out of individual transistors. By the time I was in high school, they had become available on integrated circuits that offered multiple gates, shift registers, flip-flops, multiplexors, and a bunch of other more sophisticated functions. Pictured above is the collection of chips I assembled while in college so that I could quickly prototype my ideas. My first self directed design was a 16-channel logic analyzer which won me the Stearn’s Prize awarded to the outstanding student in electrical or computer engineering at Union College.

Alas, It has been more than three decades since I built anything from these parts and I decided that they would not be making the move to the River House. Jeanine and I are making a concerted effort to get rid of all of the things we have accumulated over the years but no longer use.

Today, I decided to make a timelapse video of a typical day in the shop. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your perspective, my camera ran out of both storage space and battery so only two hours were captured. The video lasts less than 2 minutes and shows the construction of seven Newell posts. Order of operations: Rip boards to 3-inch width, cut to length at the miter saw, move to the router table to create a lock miter joint along all edges (most time-consuming), return to the table saw to make relief cut in half the boards to prevent tearout, empty the dust collector at some point, dry fit the Newell posts and move on to routing and sanding the hand rail I glued up earlier in the day. Not shown, the other 6 hours of work before returning home to snow blow the driveway. Gotta love retirement?

Shoptimization continued today. First, I moved my tablesaw and jointer/planer 6 inches to the east. This small change permits me to machine 10-foot long stock which was not possible before. Second, I built a set of shelves for my cordless tools that are now located under the picture window. Moving them from their previous location also opens up the space where I plan to install a sink one day. Third, I consolidate all my tools on the north wall of the shop where they are close at hand to my assembly tables. Fourth, I located my drill press on the east wall and repurposed a portable shelving unit I made for my old shop for drill bits and accesories. When all was said and done, I moved every last thing in my shop except the bandsaw and miter saw. I am very happy with the final layout and do not plan to make any future changes.

The remaining bamboo plywood needed to complete the stair railing for the River House is scheduled to arrive tomorrow and I found myself with a free day. I decided to spend the time optimizing my shop, a process I call “shoptimization.” With six months under my belt, I had a very clear plan for the changes I wanted to make. First, I moved my router table to where the drill press used to be. I aligned the table height with that of the miter saw to take advantage of a free outfeed table. Second, I moved my “harware store” (small part cabinets with all manner of screws, nuts and bolts, etc.) from the north wall to the south wall. This freed up some prime real estate where I will locate more frequently accessed tools. Third, I moved my sanding station from next to the outside door to the corner where the router table used to be. This location allows me better access to the machine and is already plumbed for dust collection. Tomorrow, I will figure out where to locate the displaced drill press.

Pictured above are the angled ends of two 8-foot-long handrails. the first joint takes the diagonal rail back to horizontal and the second turns 90 degrees to mate with the Newell post. Each rail has 20 recessed holes on the underside angled at 32.5 degrees where the baluster will be situated. Each recess has a smaller and deeper hole drilled in the center where a 3D-printed baluster connector will be fastened with a screw. In total, each rail requires more than 60 machining operations and a dozen glue ups. A single mistake can render the entire rail unusable which makes for very stressful work. Fortunatley, these two rails came out perfectly and today they were treated to two coats of sealer and two of a protective finish. During the 2 hours of drying time between each coat, I installed a new fence on my table saw. I ordered the device back in September and have been patiently anticipating its arrival. All I can say, is that it was worth the wait and every penny I paid for it. I then cut down and fitted the original fence to my bandsaw and scrapping the piece of crap it was supplied with.

With all the work I have been doing on the River House, I have had little time for dedicated photography. The arrival of a small group of migrating common mergansers and a relatively warm day was the only motivation I needed to take a brief pause to spend some time outdoors with my camera.

Jeanine presented me with an odd request today. She wanted me to drill a couple of holes through the edges of a pair of sea shells so she could sew them onto a garment. I am sure there is a way to do this without destroying the shells in the process but I decided it would be far easier to glue a couple of loops to the back through which the thread could be passed. Jeanine was in charge of fabricating a superhero-themed outfit for “Island Woman”, one of her friends who is celebrating her 60th birthday.

Even though it was explained to me, I remain unclear about why Jeanine is dressed as Fanny Wheeler, an important figure in Concord’s history. Something about a secret society.

I was dressed as a stair railing contractor and completed 5 of the 7 railings needed to apply for our occupancy permit. I am using 3D-printed parts to connect the railing to the balusters. These can be seen in the photo below where the railing is turned upside down with the printed parts screwed into the bottom of the railing.