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Watch this 10-minute tour of a classic box newel stair railing designed and built by cabinetmaker Steve Maxwell. Solid cherry construction, see all the details Steve used to make this classic piece of millwork.
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0:00
I've been working on a box new staircase railing and I'm coming to the end of the
0:14
project now. Before I fasten everything in place I thought you might appreciate
0:19
seeing how it goes together. It might help you with a project in mind that you
0:23
have and it just shows the design that I came up with and some of the advantages
0:28
especially in terms of how solid it is. That's one of the reasons I like box
0:33
new staircase railings is because they are so solid. It gets the name from this
0:38
new post here. It's a box with some panels here and this side has been
0:45
secured. It's glued and this is permanently installed and it's quite strong. The only movement in it is the actual flexing of this box. There's
0:54
no wiggling on the bottom at all. Before I assemble the other side with glue
1:00
let me show you how it goes together and you can see what you think
1:04
I'm going to start by lifting off this box newel here and the first thing I
1:10
want to show you is how this newel fastens to the floor. This is a sandwich
1:16
of plywood that I've made. It's about three inches high I think and it's
1:22
glued and secured to the floor with these structural screws so it's not
1:27
going anywhere. There's a floor joist that runs here so these screws sink into
1:33
that. These just sink into the plywood subfloor but the whole thing is fastened
1:37
with glue and what that allows me to do is drive some screws through the side of
1:44
the box newel into this base piece and that really adds a lot of strength
1:50
You can see some of the screw holes that I have here. I'll be driving
1:57
screws in there as a final step. I'm also going to put a lot of glue around here
2:02
so it kind of seeps down into the gap between the box newel and this
2:07
anchor block. What's going on here is the railing. Let's see if I can get it apart
2:16
here for you. So the railing, I should say everything has been made from
2:25
rough lumber. Inch thick, inch and a half, two inch. This railing I milled. You can
2:33
see here it's laminated. The lamination mark is in the finger groove
2:38
here and this profile was created with three different router bits. There's the
2:46
router bit that forms the top part. There's another router bit that I use to
2:50
form where your fingers grab and then a chamfer bit along the bottom. This groove
2:57
underneath nestles into where the where these spindles go and then later when
3:04
everything's together I will be putting thin pieces of wood between the spindles
3:10
But if you go down here you can see how how these spindles fit in with things
3:19
The base of the railing is made with this 1 3 quarter inch thick base
3:26
piece. This railing is made of cherry. You can do this sort of work with any kind
3:32
of hardwood and you can see here there's a half inch hole to accept a dowel and
3:39
then the spindle goes on top. Well at the bottom of this hole I don't suppose you
3:44
can see it too well but at the bottom of this hole there's a wood screw. So this
3:49
base piece that you see here is fastened to the subfloor with glue and then one
3:55
screw in each of the dowel holes that run along the length. Now over here
4:02
you've got separate pieces of trim. One on this side and one on the other side
4:07
and that creates the channel within which the spindles fit. So it contains
4:14
them from side to side and when I add these blocks it creates a kind of a
4:21
square mortise within which the spindle fits and it's quite solid. When I glue
4:28
this when I put it all together finally I'm going to use weld bond glue in here
4:33
because I have a finish on this surface and weld bond is one of the only glues
4:37
that can stick to a finish. I'm just going to use regular high strength
4:41
cabinetmakers glue for all the other joints but that's the way this bottom
4:47
part goes together with the base, the side moldings, the dowels for the spindles and
4:53
then these blocks that flank the spindles and form a kind of a base. So here we
5:00
have the railing. I've taken it off you can see underneath the half inch dowel
5:04
holes. Cut this groove with a dado blade on the table saw and as I said there's
5:09
going to be spacers of wood just a little bit higher than flush with the
5:14
bottom of the railing that further secures the top of the spindles. You'll
5:20
notice here the spindles are numbered with a certain arrow direction and
5:27
that's because each spindle is the holes for it are specifically drilled
5:35
for that spot. I've been as accurate as I could and you know in practice you can
5:40
actually interchange some of these but just to be sure that the holes line up
5:45
properly and that the blocks at the bottom are tight to the spindles I just
5:51
number everything and then I can be sure it's going to go together properly. So
5:55
the assembly procedure will be to glue the bottoms of the spindles with their
6:01
blocks to slather some glue on top here some glue into the holes and then to put
6:07
the railing back on and the railing is held to the newel post with some more of
6:14
these structural screws. These are great they have a big beefy thread on them a
6:19
nice big head they hold like crazy so the holes here in the railing correspond
6:26
with holes that I've drilled here in the newel post. I used some dowel centers to
6:31
transfer the holes properly and then the structural screws just just go inside
6:38
and I have a right angle drill which lets me tighten that up and pulls it all
6:47
together and I just leave it alone for a day and it's as solid as a rock so
6:52
that's the design overview I hope you find it useful maybe you can make a
6:57
staircase railing like this yourself. So just before I finish up here I've got the final assembly done everything's
7:15
solid I wanted to show you about the the newel caps that I've made I built them
7:20
as a separate assembly and this piece of plywood here fits inside the newel post
7:27
there's a little bit of slack there moving around a bit my plan is to put
7:34
some silicone caulking around here just to act as an adhesive not a permanent
7:38
adhesive but one that's just going to to keep this solid and then what I'm
7:45
gonna finish up with is installing some trim around here I've done this sort of
7:51
work before and I've always fastened the trim to the newel cap but I think this time I'm gonna try fastening it to the actual newel so this is going to be
7:59
solid although I can lift this off if I ever need to I've allowed a little bit
8:08
of space here it's a dry time of the year where I am now I've allowed a little bit of space around the pyramid cap so that it can expand in the
8:17
summertime if need be I don't think there's any way around that but I just
8:21
would like to be able to remove this in case anything happens this I can take
8:25
off it's not glued and then the pyramid cap is also not glued it's held with
8:31
screws driven through oversized holes so that it can expand and contract a
8:36
little bit one last thing I had a challenging situation here this sloped
8:42
roof this is an attic this is a finished attic situation and the sloped roof was
8:47
getting in the way I was really trying to figure out how I could do this I didn't want to lower the railing so much and the newel post that it wouldn't hit
8:56
the roof so what did I end up doing was just making a regular newel cap and
9:03
cutting it off to fit just slicing it on the table saw sanding and smooth
9:08
getting the angle right angling the top corner of the newel post and it just
9:16
kind of fits in here and it looks like it's sprouting out of the attic roof
9:21
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