VIDEO: Metal Stair Frame Tour

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Well, I want to show you something about that staircase that I've been making a few videos about

We've got it mocked up here in the shop. This is the same height situation as where it's going to ultimately go

As I showed you before, we've got some two-inch pipes that form the structure of the stairs

We've got our water jet cut top plate here. This will be visible

And everything's been sandblasted. That's why it has this grey color. We've decided we're going to sandblast it again after all the welding's done

and then put a coat of Minwax Wipe-On Poly, which is a wood finish

but it also seals metal quite well and will keep this grey look without rusting

So at this stage, we've welded together what we call the metal treads

That's these units here. They're cherry treads of a similar L shape

Will be lag bolted to the top to make it look nice

But this forms the structure, and I've made a jig to weld these triangles onto the metal tread component

which you can see in another video. Now I have a whole bunch of these metal tread assemblies, sub-assemblies, and we're welding them to the pipe

And of course, they have to be equally spaced. And that's where this story pole comes in

If you look up here, this is the top surface of the top steel tread

And these pan marks are equidistant from each other all the way down

so that when you step on the bottom tread of the stair

with the inch and three quarter inch, inch and three quarter cherry tread on top of it

you'll experience the correct rise on that stair, which is about seven inches and seven sixteenths

So, the story pole I'm about to use now will show us where to put the next tread

And we've got a few that have been tack welded in place now

We're just tack welding at the moment, and then we'll take it down and put the assembly horizontal

so I can weld it more easily. But right now, the bottom edge of this cross piece is at exactly the height that we want the top surface of the next tread to go

The beauty of having a story pole for this is that any error in previous treads does not accumulate

because we're always referencing from the floor, and I know that everything works out perfectly, so that everything's equal

So, here's how the story pole works. We set it in place, put a level on it, so that we have it oriented correctly

and then I just take a pencil, and it's the bottom edge of the cross piece that's important

So I mark it here, and I also mark it over here

And take it away, and that's where we want those marks, pencil marks, to show us where the next steel tread is going to go

So, our job now is to use some clamps to support the triangles

so that it sits properly, and the end is lined up with all the others, and then we tack weld that

So we've got some clamps here. As I said, I'm not going to be welding this completely

I'm just tacking it in place, so that I can weld it in a better position later

But, if you look here, the top of the tread is flush with our pencil mark on both sides

We're not just going by the pencil mark, though. We also want to make sure that it's correct in real terms, so we're using this level this way

and then also from front to back, too, because there's a little bit of wiggle room there, but we're ready to go

And all that has to happen now is to tack this particular tread in place

So I've got one more weld to go. There's a little bit of a MIG wire that's spattered off here

but that's no problem, because the whole thing's going to be sandblasted before final finishing, and that'll be removed

But, here goes. There. That's sufficient to hold the tread. It's quite solid, at least for fabrication purposes

And we've got another half dozen more to do, and then we're done

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