Shaping a handrail transition

This is my attempt to show you how i made the handrail transition i listed in my projects page.

What i started out with was a full size drawing of the handrail profile. I then decided i was going to do the rough hogging out of material by using a core box bit in my formica router. So if you look at the drawing you can see how i drew in the actual router bit size and its depth location to tell me how far from the edge of the rail to go, and how deep to go.

I then fashioned a fence to clamp onto my router base. This fence allowed me to reference off of the 90 degree side edge of the handrail. Also i made it a tall base so i could simply let my router ride on top of the handrail, but the edge being held at 90 degrees is what reall kept the setup user friendly. Of course, with such a small (but easy to hold) router i had to take all this wood out in about 1/8” increments.

I then took away my referencing edge on both side using the coping saw. Refering to my full size drawing i was able to get a line to cut on i knew would get me close to the actual shape.

Next i used my scraper or chisel to get most of the high ridges off. Then i fashioned a scaper to the profile to help me stay as true to the correct shape as i could.

Finally i got to do a lot of 80 grit hand sanding to clean the piece up and make it start looking presentable.

I could go on as to how i got the lower profile area but i suck at this getting photos into my blog. I just hope i’ve given you a pretty good idea of how i went about this project.

-- "The way to make a small fortune in woodworking- start with a large one"