Rustic Lodge Stair Railing

Termite

Allow me to erase that doubt. You are absolutely correct. The IRC code requires that the triangular portion of a stair riser/tread/guardrail intersection cannot pass a 6" sphere. When properly built the 6" rule is not a problem.

Steeler99, if the bottom of the rail were 6" above the bottom of the step it would not only violate the 4" rule for guardrails, it would easily violate the 6" rule at the side of the steps.

BigJim

I always drilled my holes after the rail was installed, there is way too much room for error to drill on a drill press, not to mention getting the angle correct, even if you could figure out how to handle the long rail on a drill press. You wouldn't be able to drill the bottom holes, on your stairs, with a drill press anyway.

Lay out where the bottom holes will be drilled, then plumb up, mark the spot where you will drill the top holes. If it will help you, there are drills with a leveling bubble in the handle but it never helped me much.

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Jim

Steeler99

I guess I"m lost then, I dont understand how that can be. 11" tread by 7 1/4" steps....Um, I believe any six inch sphere would fit through that.

If you have some sort of diagram, I'd love to see it. Every architectural drawing I've seen has it indicated as I described

Steeler99

Nevermind, I found it....see page ten of this pdf link I'm attaching.

http://www.arcways.com/pdfs/IRC2000a.pdf

This is a stair manufacturer that posted the IRC on their website under the architect resources tab. This has all the information about all the specs

Termite

Steeler99, that is a great resource that the stair manufacturers association puts out. I've carried a copy of that for years and it helps people understand anything and everything confusing related to stairs.

They have all the editions of the I-codes linked on their site, so people can use the visual interpretation of the code cycle enforced in their area.
www.stairways.org

Steeler99

Yeah, I'll say it's a great resource, I had quite a time trying to find anything on the shoerail or baserail, whichever you prefer to call it. Everything I found showed the ballusters seating on top of the step....and of course, nothing as visual as that.