Monday, July 29, 2013

Stairs for the slide

As soon as I came home Thursday evening, I really needed to do some woodworking that didn't have anything to do with the roof on the house or similar sensible things.
My children told me that we were going to get some visitors in the weekend who had smaller children. Therefore we simply had to make a new set of stairs for the slide by the terrace.

This seemed like an ideal project to me. Nothing too fancy, outside in the balmy evening and both boys were really hooked on helping.

Gustav wanted to sand the entire structure, so he found a random orbit sander and I helped him installing some sandpaper. Asger originally wanting to assist me decided that sanding looked so fun that he wanted to do that as well.. We found another random orbit sander for him, and he started sanding the old bench and the chairs on the terrace.

I found a piece of 6 x 1½" larch that I deemed was suitable for the project. I copied the old stairs, so there wasn't much measuring involved.
I made a series of dados using a saw and a chisel. These are approximately 1 cm (3/8") deep. I didn't worry too much about getting the floor of the dados smooth, so the depth varied a little.

The steps were made from the same board and plainly inserted in the dados. They were secured with two screws, and the entire stairs were mounted on the tower of the slide.

The old stairs with a broken step.

Sanding.

Chiselling out the dados.

Testing the finished stairs.

6 comments:

  1. Always nice to have a little help.

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  2. I wonder if your boys would be willing to do a little travelling for their work? I'm looking to install a porch/deck and could really use some of their expert help...
    The staircase looks great by the way. Those types of jobs are my favorite: straightforward, useful, and looks good. If only all of them could be that way.
    Bill

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    1. I am sure my boys would love travelling to the USA, but the problem is that after about 1 hour or so, they normally tend to loose a little bit of interest in the project, so I think you are better off getting your daughter to help you.
      Thanks
      Jonas

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    2. Like my daughter, they would be on the lawn playing in no time, but that is what I like about kids; they can find fun in anything, and when it's not fun anymore they move onto something else.

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  3. It looks great! I have a project coming up that will require a bunch of dadoes similar to this project. Did it take long?

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    Replies
    1. Hi Brian.
      It really didn't take very long. All in all I think it was done in about 1½ hours effectively. It did take a little longer actually, but that was because I had to find sanders and sandpaper etc.
      It greatly adds to the speed of such a project, that the layout is simple and can be copied directly from the old stairs. Furthermore, I didn't do any finishing of the board at all.
      Brgds
      Jonas

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