| Fri, Sep 5 2008 “There was one perfect carpenter, and they nailed him up.” That’s what Ed Fiske, the first builder I ever worked for, used to say whenever he made a mistake, which wasn’t often. The other thing I remember distinctly about Ed was that he never seemed to think less of himself for having made a mistake. I was reminded of Ed after getting an email from my friend Jeff yesterday.
Jeff had seen last week’s post, which ended with me firing a nail through the face of my brand new oak handrail. Jeff wanted to know “exactly” what I did after shooting that nail through the handrail, and he also told me about the best carpenter he ever knew, a guy named Drew Arent.
“How come you never make mistakes?” Jeff asked Drew once.
“I make them all the time,” Drew said. “What makes you think I never make mistakes?”
“Because I never see you jump around, swear, and throw stuff,” Jeff said.
I used to throw my hammer. Only when I was working outside, though. I would make some stupid mistake, usually because I ignored the little voice in my head warning me not to do something, and I would boil over with anger at myself for being so lazy. Why didn’t I drill a pilot hole first? Why didn’t I move the ladder? After pausing just long enough to choose a safe trajectory, I would wing my hammer end over end as far as I could.
It was actually a pretty effective gesture, like counting to 10, because I would have to walk a long way to fetch the hammer, and then walk back, which gave me time to calm down.
Over time, I learned a lot about carpentry mistakes, not the least of which was how to avoid many of them. I learned not to base decisions on laziness. I learned not to rush at certain times and not to push too hard if I’m tired. I learned that most nailing mistakes, especially hammer tracks, happen because your body’s in the wrong position. I learned that there’s always a way to correct a mistake and that figuring out what that correction might be is tough to do in the late afternoon, having just made the mistake, and much easier the next morning.
And the latest thing I’ve learned about making mistakes, like firing a nail through your brand-new handrail, is that they make good fodder for a blog. Thu, Aug 28 2008  The typical spacing between balusters on a staircase used to be about 6 in. I’m pretty sure this dimension was used because small children could stick their heads between the balusters, but their ears would catch when they tried to pull their heads back out. Hence, the staircase served as a kind of day-care center when you could safely park your kids while you did housework or ran errands. Much to the dismay of many parents, the building code now stipulates that balusters be installed such that a 4-in.-dia. sphere cannot pass between them.
I spent last weekend installing balusters on my winder staircase. It’s a closed-stringer stair, which means when you look at it from the side, you can’t see the treads and risers. They’re hidden by the stringer. The balusters are seated in a grooved (or plowed) shoe rail that caps the stringers, rather than being mortised into the treads. (In the old days, balusters were dovetailed into treads, and the mitered tread returns covered the joint.) I built closed-stringer stairs because this style was typical for the period and size of my house, a fact I determined after exhaustive research (meaning I flipped through two books and looked at the pictures).
 The handrail on my stair also has a groove in it, so the balusters, which are square, get seated in the groove, top and bottom. The spaces between are filled with thin strips of wood called fillet pieces. Once you’ve calculated the proper spacing, installing the balusters is a pretty straightforward job, assuming that the rails are exactly parallel to the stringers and that the newels are perfectly plumb. Of course, I’m lousy at math, my rails are close to parallel, and my newels are a little better than plumb. So installing balusters was more of a challenge.
I got them mostly done. Bob had given me two bits of advice that proved useful. He said to resist the temptation, after calculating the space between balusters, to set up stop blocks on the miter saw and cut all the balusters and fillets at once. No matter how careful you are, he explained, things start creeping off the layout, and errors accumulate.
Bob also said to step back often and look at the stairs from a few feet away: “You’ll spot things you can’t see when your face is 12 in. away.” I followed this advice and stepped back after installing the first baluster, which is a good thing because it was in the wrong place. I had screwed up the math when I tried to calculate the length of the fillet pieces based on horizontal distance between balusters. I was glad to catch the mistake before I got any farther.
The rest of the job went OK until I nailed in the last baluster. Because the newel post was in the way, I held the nail gun at a different angle. Whoops.
 Wed, Aug 20 2008 Years ago when I was tiling the countertop in my kitchen, I ran into a layout problem. I couldn’t figure out how to avoid a row of very skinny (and very ugly) tiles at the sink, which was a tiled-in farmhouse sink from Kohler, so I called tilesetter Michael Byrne. “Oh, that’s easy,” he said after I had explained my dilemma, “Just picture-frame a tile border around the sink. You can make the border whatever width you need to adjust the layout.” It worked like a charm.
Our art director, Bob Goodfellow, calls these solutions “back doors," the tricks of the trade that help you escape when you’re trapped by a problem. Bob knows a lot them. He used to be a
boatbuilder, and then moved on to stairbuilding. His knowledge of woodworking is one of the major reasons that Fine Homebuilding is as good as it is.
 These days Bob is into metal. He owns a plasma cutter and no longer deigns to work with wood. But he can still be consulted, like Nero Wolfe, or maybe Mycroft Holmes (the older brother whose deductive powers were even greater than Sherlock’s). I’ve been visiting Bob a lot as I work on my winder staircase.
Last week I talked to Bob about setting the handrails. There are three sections, each running between newels: a level rail at the top of the stairs, a central rake rail and a very steep rail at the bottom. My problem was the bottom rail. Despite my best efforts, the newel post at the bottom of the stairs was twisted. And of course, I glued and screwed it into place as though someone’s life might depend on it. There was no fixing it.
Some of you, I’m sure, can already see the problem. The cut on the handrail where it meets that bottom newel is steeper than 45°, which means I can’t easily cut it on a miter saw, and it’s got to be beveled (a compound cut) because of the twisted newel. Technically I could make this cut on my compound-miter saw, but it would be really tedious. When I took the problem to Bob, he said, “Oh, that’s easy,” sounding like Michael Byrne. “Just clamp the rail to the newel posts and cut it with a handsaw, using the twisted newel as a guide. You don’t even have to measure the angle.” And that’s just what I did.
 I installed the rail Monday afternoon. And while it took some time to get it clamped in place at just the right angle, making the actual cut was surprisingly easy. I taped a piece of 1/4-in. plywood to the face of the newel post to protect it from the saw. I briefly considered cutting with a Japanese-style handsaw, but then realized a traditional western-style saw was the better choice. Because the blade on the latter is stiffer, wider, and longer, it gave me a greater bearing surface against the newel post. The cut was actually cleaner than the cut from my miter saw (maybe I need to change the blade).
Once I had the right angle on the bottom of the rail, I held it in place and marked the length (and angle) at the upper newel. I made the top cut on the rail with my miter saw, after making a jig that I learned about from Felix Marti (another back door). The jig creates a fence at a right angle to the miter saw’s fence and allows you to cut angles greater than 45°.
Next weekend I’ll install the balusters. I sure hope Bob has a good idea for how to lay out the spacing evenly.
Thu, Aug 14 2008 
When I bought my old house nearly 20 years ago, it had an
old but not original set of steep winder stairs with no handrail. My wife and I
both fell down them several times because we made the mistake of descending in
stocking feet. I knew I would have to rebuild the stairs…someday.
A couple of years ago my friend and former colleague Andy
Engel wrote a book for The Taunton Press about building stairs, and he needed a
project to photograph for his chapter on winders. So I hired Andy to build my
stairs, and I took a week off from work to help him. (I think he charged more
as a result.)
We got the stairs built and usable (now the only one who
falls down them is our German shepherd, Zack, who has trouble negotiating the
turn at the bottom). Andy got the photos he needed. And of course, the stairs
remained unfinished for two more years.
Well, I’m finally building the balustrade, and I’ll share
photos in a future blog. Last weekend, though, I spent two days with a
paintbrush in hand, priming and first-coating as much as possible. I learned
how tedious it is to paint risers, cutting in against varnished treads.
But I also needed to paint 58 balusters before I installed
them, as I damn sure didn’t want to paint them in place. The question was what
to do with 58 balusters while the paint dried. I knew that I would have to hang
them up somehow. So I banged a 4d finish nail into the end of each one and bent
the nail over with needle-nose pliers to make a hook. But where could I hang them?
Then I remember the new clothesline that I had just installed. Problem solved. 
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