These two can be drawn as one pattern to be folded and glued to the wreath block ( see section “Layout the wreath” in “Drawing a Volute”). The fourth pattern is in two parts: A side view, and a top stretched view of the wreath. One spiral section pattern is glued to a 10/4 block of mahogany (planed to the finished thickness of the rail) to be sawn to shape (more on that next), and the other is glued to a piece of 3/4- in. Next are two copies of the plan view of the spiral section itself. These two are identical to the first pattern, but without the wreath and straight rail. This pattern gets taped to my workbench or a nice level surface (see photo, right). I use this pattern when I assemble the pieces to make sure the angles are correct and that the pieces fit properly. Hit your browser's 'back' button to return to this article.)įor the spiral and wreath that I am about to carve, I need four patterns. The first is a plan view of the spiral section, wreath, and a length of straight rail. If you haven’t read that story yet, then STOP and read it before reading this article! If you read the last article in this series, Jed Dixon’s story, Drawing A Volute, then you already know about the drawings and the patterns. I am going to show you how I carve rail using modern tools and techniques to make quality rail parts efficiently and affordably. Yes, someone still does that! You can, too. I started carving effigy pipes in my teens and twenties, traveled extensively-carving and performing with wooden marionettes-and worked for several stair companies carving handrail and architectural elements. I’ve been carving wood professionally for 25 years. Hi, my name is Mike Kennedy, and I carve handrails for a living.

Many builders and designers think that catalog stairs are all that’s available. The other reason machine-made faux stairs continue showing up in custom homes is that many builders, homeowners and architects don’t know that it is still possible to get high-quality, hand-made custom stairs with furniture-grade handrails. They may believe that carving is a lost art or a quaint hobby for retirees. They don’t know that professional woodcarvers are still around. They think those kind of skills died out with the dinosaurs-it’s too difficult, too expensive. Often, a builder or homeowner is trying to cut costs, which is understandable but wrongheaded. Do you really think that the biggest piece of furniture-the centerpiece of a multi-million dollar home-is the place to cut corners? Do you think anyone a hundred years from now will be impressed with how much money the builder saved? How about five years from now? Will anyone say “Wow! Look at that stair! I’ll bet they really saved some money there!” Would you want that? There are two reasons for this. The first is economic. I have made many beautiful handrails in modern styles using tangent handrail geometry. Styles may change over time, but geometry doesn’t.Ĭatalog stairs have their place dressing up lower value homes or McMansions, but to my disappointment, they are rapidly becoming the standard in high-value custom homes, too. This is not to say that the only good styles are old styles. Sure, they are an approximation of those old cherished forms, but they are a poor approximation at best (sort of like big-box furniture). On the other hand, if you walk into a modern custom home, there is a good chance you will find a catalog stair complete with machine-made parts designed not from natural forms or classical elements, but for the ease of the machining. If that’s the case, I bet a century or two after it was made, people are still impressed with the look and feel of your railing, and the amount of skill it took to make it. The handrail was carved using time-honored tangent geometry, sharp chisels, a trained eye, and real human sweat. It was built by hand out of carefully chosen materials.

Is it graceful? Is it beautiful? Was it built by the hand of an old-time craftsman? Was it built for the house, or chosen from some catalog of cheap foreign-made parts?Ĭhances are, if you have an old Colonial or a Victorian home, the stair was designed according to traditional geometry based on natural rules for elegance and form. Elegant. It is often the biggest piece of furniture in a home and one of the most valuable ornamental assets. When you walk into a custom home, an old Victorian or an old Colonial, one of the first and most impressive sights is the stair. Where carpentry and sculpture merge and CNC machines fear to tread

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