The Stair Factory

The main stairway, with eight of the twelve treads temporarily placed. The light on the wall is from the sun shining through a stained glass feature above the entry door.

The right materials arrived in another week, and I no longer had any obstacle or excuse for completing the stair steps. “Factory” is far too strong a description, but having a procedure for making multiple copies of treads and risers for the staircase brought the project into a new phase. I was no longer figuring out how to do it, solving puzzles and learning new tools and techniques. I was applying what I had learned to each piece of wood and fabricating each component to spec.

This was a little unusual for me. To be applying a recipe over and over is not my normal activity. After a career in technology where every day brings a new problem to solve, repeating a process twelve times over seemed like lack of progress. But that is probably just an idiosyncrasy of being in a research and development environment. I’m guessing the guys over in manufacturing get thrills when they can use the same process to stamp out a million identical parts!

Apart from this frivolous viewpoint of mine, there was a larger concern. If the process became too automatic, too mechanical, too routine to keep my focus, my inattention would become a risk with the power tools I was using. I have a friend who is my shining role model for workshop safety, that recently suffered a serious accident. This was at the forefront of my mind as I embarked on this next work.

To mitigate the risk, I decided to run the factory for three separate “production runs” of four stair steps each. The smaller batch size kept me switching between tools and I would not become inured to any one of them.

It was not the most efficient of course. My first four steps took two months to figure out and install. The next twelve took two weeks. I’m sure a professional could do this all in a day. But that’s not the point. I’m not doing this to prove anything. I’m doing it to create something cool and learn some skills in the process.

A view down the stairway with the straight treads in place, prior to being shaped.

After the treads have been shaped for easy descent.