Pictures of one of my projects

It's not necessarily a home that screams 'cozy', but it has a certain panache. Very nice work on that railing... that sweep is very smooth.

That's some nice work, quality that's of the sort you'd see in a magazine (if you will...).

I think I'll not venture into the issue of you not being mentioned 'cause you know more about it than me (and that sort of thing ticks me off in a big way) but I'd be interested in how it turns out if you're inclined to let us know.

John

Getting credit for your work is a big pet peeve with me. For me, I have the biggest issue when someone states that "we are building our own home". Sounds impressive and for most would be a massive undertaking. In almost all cases, they mean they are paying someone to build them a home. Most of these types wouldn't know what end of a hammer to hold. I have met people that have actually built their own home, driven every nail, routed wire, electrical, HVAC...ect. To me that is impressive. The meaning of "having a home built" and "building your own home" are significantly different. For some reason they are used interchangably.

Having massive amounts of money to come up with a crazy idea and paying someone else to execute is a luxury. To be able to execute the crazy idea is indeed a skill, and one to be proud of.

WOW! I am going to go back and do some more polishing. :-)

How did you join those long sweeps of railing and satisfy an SOB client?

The longest sweep required a 20' 6" piece of tube, and the 180 grit finish brushed tube only comes in 20' lengths.

So I had to butt weld it on, sand the crap out of it, and then bend it to shape.

I use pre-brushed tube for hand rails. It makes life so much easier.

Now I have a Flex tubing sander that wraps around the tube as it sands the weld away.

I paid $720 for mine. Porter Cable repair has refurbished ones for $358.

really really nice work, outstanding workmanship! walt

Mine is the one on the left. I have never seen the one of the right until now, looks cool.

It paid for itself in one $12,000 railing.

It uses 1.5" x 24" belts. I usually buy ceramic or zirconium 3" x 24" belts and split them.

The belt wraps around the tube as you apply pressure. It makes it extremely easy to erase butt welds on tubing, and blend the marks in with the brushed finish on the tube.

I like to demo it to my students using a 36 grit zirconium belt on 3" black iron pipe. In one pass it polishes 1/3 of the circumference of the tube to a uniform brushed finish.

The only other tool anything like it is an air version made by Dynabrade for at least twice the moeny.

Way way cool!

Best to you and all.

Martin

Dog gone Ernie how long did it take you to do the whole job for the one railing? But of more interest how did you manage to get a smooth bend of such a large radius? Lots and lots of small bends or what?

John

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Fortunately for my wallet the one on the right is not available in the US yet.

My main problem is blending the bead on the acute side of a 60º joint.

Those DO look like interesting and useful toys...tools... I suspect that for something like the railing project, it turned what could have been a time-consuming nightmare into a fairly painless process. The only thing that puzzles me a TAD is the 1200 watts in and 700 watts produced fields. Am I goofy, or does this indicate that there is 500 watts disappearing someplace? Since it has been my experience that this sort of thing TENDS to result in heat... something must be getting plenty warm. Regards Dave Mundt

Other than a rat tail file have you thought of using a soft filler metal over the weld? Like lead or a soft braze then file that?

John

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Rack bending is exactly that. Lots of small bends. Before I built my roller is was my only solution. It isn't really all that hard. It just takes a good eye for curves.

Take a small stout table. Bolt it to the ground so it can't move. Screw wood blocks to the top with curved surfaces. slide the tube between the blocks while racking the tube to one side every few inches. The idea is to have a series of small bends that are close enough together to fool the eye. It does take practice, but is extremely cheap to do.

The most critical part is not to allow the tube to rotate, or you end up with a spiral. I usually take the length of tube, and nest it into a length of angle iron, then use the edeg of the angle iron to sharpie marker a line all the way down the tube. This way you have a reference line to keep the tube from rotating accidentally.

Very tricky, that's the thing I was wondering about the most. How to draw a line straight down the side of a tube! Good idea.

But really, $12,000, how much time did it take you? I just want to know in case there's some room for competition :^).

John

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Yea, I thought of that as soon as I hit the send key. I can't think of any other way to do it besides filing or *very* fine tig work.

Maybe you can lead it then chrome plate :^).

John

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About 2 weeks on and off. We had to get the handrails roughed in fast so they could pass their mechanical inspection. We came back a week later to start the clean up work.

The railings ran up both sides of a set of stairs that came up in the middle of the lobby. The stairs lead to a short bridge that angled towards the stairwell that wrapped up around an elevator shaft, and ended at the second floor lobby. So the outside perimeter handrail ended up being a continuous tube about 70 feet long and the inside rail about 50 feet. For the lower stairs and bridge there already existed a steel rail system that was built with the stairs. I had to add the grip tube in 2" brushed stainless. So we had to hack holes in the walls to glue plywood to the back of the drywall for the supports, then patch the holes. Then mount the supports and play connect the dots with 2" brushed stainless tubing. Then weld in the elbows. A week later we came back, sawzalled the rails apart into long pieces, finished the welds in a temporary shop we set up in the building, grind all the welds smooth, place the finished rail sections back on their supports, weld the sections back together in place, sand off those welds, and finally buff the whole length with scotchbrite.

Easy really.

A air die grinder with small carbide burrs.

BTW I thought I would save money when ordering the elbows from RB Wagner, by ordering 180 deg turns and then cut the actual angle needed from that 180 degrees. I figured I could get several short angles for each turn. What I didn't count on was that to draw a 2" tube around a 180 deg turn necessarily reduces it's outside diameter. It made for some really tricky welds, and then trying to blend out those weld beads without grinding through the tube wall.

Next time I will order more elbows with shorter arcs.

BTW RB Wagner are great guys.

They did some 1 day turnaround brushed stainless 180 degree turns I needed for another job, on a Friday afternoon before a holiday and actually got them shipped out before the end of the day. Love those guys. Bernice is in charge of orders and while her picture in their catalog isn't very flattering, she is a great lady.

That's right, I've done this before. But instead of using a burr which I found to be difficult to control at times and too fat to get into tight spaces, I used cut-off wheel 4" x 1/16", I think I also had a thicker wheel too. I got some pretty nice looking results too. Can't remember what it was for even it's been so long.

John

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