Manual of Purpose-Made Woodworking Joinery

128 Designing and making stairs to current building regulations

more attractive and when one’s hand moved up from

the handrail, it felt natural to start holding on to the

turned portion of the newel just above it – as demon-

strated in Figure 6.48(b)’s photo.

Setting out the wreath

Figure 6.58(b): The key to this is the making of a 6mm

plywood template called a face mould and the geome-

try for the wreath – to make it more understandable –

is given after a view of the three- dimensional template

below. The two central lines shown on the face mould

are tangents to the wreath’s inclined centre and the

other two lines, one at each end, are extensions for

jointing tolerances.

Figure 6.58(c): The imaginary quadrant- shaped

centre line of the wreathed string in Figure 6.53(c),

between the two newels and riser- faces 2 to 7, is

the basic information that was used to develop the

wreathed handrail above it. And to help visualize how

this inclined single- twist wreath is transformed from

geometric principles to a hand- manufactured item, the

quadrant- shaped centre line in Figure 6.58(c) below

• described from a- b to d – has been drawn within a

ways; 1) formed with 3 pieces of 15mm horizontal
gluelam laminae in a jig- former (with a short- length
top laminae added after for the ramp); 2) formed by
G- cramped, gluelam construction with 3 pieces of
pre- shaped vertical laminae of 23mm, or 4 pieces of
17mm laminae; or 3) cut to shape from one piece of
100 × 75mm timber. This third method was used –
and after surfacing and thicknessing the timber to the
handrail- width of 68mm and marking out the hand-
rail shape with the aid of the pre- curved string, it was
cut on a bandsaw and brought to a finished shape with
a compass plane and spokeshave.

Wreathed handrail over the wreathed

outer string

Figure 6.58(a): It has to be said that – because of
the close proximity of the newels on each side of the
wreathed string – this stair design presented a chal-
lenging situation for the wreathed handrail to rise
up from the level newel- cap at the bottom and be
jointed to the newel cap of the adjacent newel at the
top. It became apparent that about two- thirds of the
upper wreathed- handrail would be almost vertical and
look unattractive so close to the left- hand newel. So,
contrary to the original plan, the wreath was modified
and made to finish at the segmental- curved top of the
square portion of the receiving newel post. This looked

Top of wreathed

string

Figure 6.58 (a) The handrail wreath in relation to the
adjoining newel posts.

Figure 6.58 (b) The 6mm ply face- mould template. Note

that the holes (of 18mm Ø) are for easier viewing/loca-

tion of the tangent lines to be marked on the handrail

wreath.

d

c

b

a

Pitch

angle

Figure 6.58 (c) The geometry of the quarter ellipse

above the square- prism quadrant.