video: Equally spacing balusters with dividers

[Tom King]

I'm normally soft spoken, and haven't made many videos, so if there are questions, I can answer them.  I'm hoping it's pretty much self-explanatory.

Dividers to equally space balusters - YouTube

[Tom King]

This shows the marks left by the dividers on the line.



 

[Don P]

Tom, do you adjust spacing in each section of a long railing run?

[Tom King]

If there is any difference in the space length, each one is done the same way separately.  A tiny fraction of an inch difference in spacing of different sections is not as noticeable as having a small, odd space on the end.  As you can see, it really doesn't take that long.

I'll post pictures of these when I get them up.  Every section has a slightly different baluster spacing.  I looked at the spacing with a tape measure, but the difference is some tiny fraction of a 1/16th.  None ended up exactly on any ruler line.

This is the first time I've used these round aluminum balusters.  We didn't want to block the view, so wooden ones would have been too wide.

The problem I'm having now is they are 8 thousandths over 3/4", so no drill bit works perfectly.  I've ordered some 3/4" copper fitting brushes to try to open the holes up a hair.  I don't mind a little bit of an interference fit, but this is too much for this many.  I got some paint in the holes painting them, so that didn't help.

When doing wooden balusters, they are stepped off the same way, but then I make a last pass and mark one side of the baluster locations.

edited to add:   I found some reground reamers on ebay.  One .756 and a .758 for 19.99 with free shipping, so hopefully that will be the easy fix.  New ones are about 120 bucks.

[Don P]

I've always held the spacing and tried to find the least offensive centering of both ends, assuming varying spacing would be more noticeable. I'll have an opportunity to try your way in a month or three.

One trick I've done is an old drafting trick, I rarely have my scribes when i need them. I'll start with a fresh sheet of ply. Well this worked back when plywood wasn't gold :D. Hook on the bottom left corner and lay out the first spacing plus baluster and mark that. Run a square line up the sheet, hook your tape on the corner and swing the tape up until some easy to multiply number crosses the square line. Holding that angle start adding or multiplying and tick off the intersections. Bring the points down with your framing square. This usually ends up with blocks screwed to it etc and the laid out sheet is my railing bench.

[Tom King]

I wish I had more pictures, but I remember this one.  This is the back side of the house I built in 1991.  I built one spec house a year for 33 years.  It has a porch that goes all the way around the house, plus a walkway bridge to the porch.  There are several different spacings between posts because of the ends being different than the long sides of the house, but all were laid out the same way, with those same dividers.

I don't know if it's too dark to see the railings, or not, but you can at least see by the walkway that there are no small spaces.

The copper on that roof cost 90 cents a pound then.  Total cost in copper was $6300.  

The two closeups were taken some years ago to show how the mortised railings into the posts had held up after 27 years.  I'm not sure if you can tell anything about spacing from them.  I didn't use to slow up enough to take pictures, and wish I had now.



 

 

[Don P]

Nice looking house. The last time I had a client look into copper was around 10 years ago, the installed bid was ~40k from a roofing company I've used before.  I'd hate to guess now. They were on a job for us as they were wrapping up the restoration of the WV capitol dome. That was a pricey roof  :D.

[Tom King]

Last time I looked, some years ago, it was 10 dollars a pound.  

When I was planning that house, I wanted to do a standing seam roof because I had never done one.  I priced the Terne coated metal, and it was 72 cents a pound. (that company went out of business in 2012.  Put out by the snap together stuff now.) That had to be painted, and frequently after the first time.  Just by luck, I checked the price of copper and it was 90 cents a pound.  I bought seven 1,000 pound rolls.

I don't remember the price of that linseed oil based paint they called for, but the break even point of the premium for copper was the second time it had to be painted.  Everyone was amazed by it back then.  Now most don't even know what it is because it's starting to turn green.

That roof should be good for hundreds of years.  The couple that owns it stopped by our house yesterday, coming to the lake for the 4th, and gave us a gift.  They tell us every so often how much they love that house.

That was the only one I ever did.  It just took too long for what I was doing.  

[Tom King]

First section up this morning.  I was worried they'd look too 2022 on a 1974 house, but the idea was to block the view as little as possible.  They appear to block the view even less in person than in these pictures.