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This is my first video clip of my lathe turning. In this video I am turning two

custom stair balusters. I will eventually load this directly to my blog. For now it is an embedded file from Google Video. Thanks for watching!

I wanted to immediately post these baluster and newel pictures made by a friend of mine in Mass. They are for a customer in Washington state. I had written a post about this project somewhere else but we are near completion. My buddy did a fantastic job on these didn’t he?

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The balusters alternate between the tapered, barley twists and the regular twist. This is the way they were in the Silas Dean home. An image of the originals can be seen here.
This next image is a picture of one of the barley twisted balusters being milled on my friends Wema lathe. The process is to turn the pieces first and then set the lathe up for milling. It is two completely separate operations.

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And finally the barley twisted maple newel to complement the balusters (or is it the other way around). The stair configuration is over-the-post. Which means the handrail is continuous and mounted on top the newels thoughout.

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I love the square detail near the bottom of the newel and balusters. This is a traditional design. My lathe is not really equipped to make this detail so my friend agreed to do these on his lathe.

Pictured below are one hundred 2 1/2 inch X 38 inch balusters for a job in Mississippi. The pin on top is 1″. This customer actually designed these with very nice drawings. I made a previous post about these. I rendered them in Google sketchup for the customer to get a 3D feel for what the final product would look like. It really is a nice design. Should look great installed. They are turned from poplar.

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This is the second or third time that someone has asked me to simulate an LJ smith newel (there may be other manufacturers that make this design but my customers always refer to LJ Smith). This particular customer wanted the starter newel to be 5″ at the base (LJ Smiths are 3″ I think). The smaller newels needed to be 3 1/2 inches at the base but my customer required specific turning lengths on the turned sections. One needed to have a 1 1/2 inch dowel inserted into the bottom (I think he was going to add his own base to this one).

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By the way these are made in red oak. I can see why the LJ Smith is a popular design. It has a nice shape.

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These 2 1/2 inch oak balusters were made for a customer in South Louisiana. The oak came from trees on his own property and had been in storage for some time and so there are some worm holes and other minor defects which added to the character of the balusters. I don’t have any closeups so you’ll have to take my word for it. But they came out very nicely. This is one of my favorite designs.

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The image below has nine 1 3/4 inch balusters (on the left of the others) that were to be installed in the second floor balcony (out of site from the larger balusters). We mimicked the same pattern as the larger balusters.

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I always get a kick out of the way stair manufacturers and furniture makers name their wares prestigious names like the “Winchester” collection and the “Hampshire” set. (It always seems to be British names). Well I’ve named these island legs the Munley legs because I initially designed it for family friends -you guessed it the Munleys. It’s just a simple vase shape but it has proven the test of time - at least in my short experience in this life. And so I seem to consistently get orders for this one.

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The larger 5 1/2inch X 36 inch are in cherry and the 3 1/2 inch legs are in maple