Red Oak Stair Landings.

[jay portland]

Hello everyone.
I'm a new member to this forum. I'm aslo very new to wood working although I've got quite the shop going already. I've recently had a few purchases that have inspired a bit of my creative side. But for now I just want to let you all know that the purpose of me posting here is that I've had some interesting learning experiences in regards to the tools and methods that I've run into during my Stair Landing Process.

General over view of Stair Project:
The inspiration for this project comes from my wife's Womans Magaine. In it, the author of the ariticle detailed how she went from Carpeted stairs to HardWood staris that had a killer Paint job on it. It was painted to look like a carpet runner using gritty paint (sand mixture) that looked awesome. Well, long story short, my wife and I liked it so much we decied to try it for ourselves.

Part one - Removal of Carpeting and prep:
This was pretty easy seeing as how we just installed a floating floor system throughout the rest of the house. We simply pulled the carpeting out and removed the pads and carpeting tack-boards. We found that the construction grade stair work would not provide a good enough base for our finished purposes (nasty 2x10 stair treads).

Part two - Demo and Replacement of stair treads:
I removed those nasty 2x10 and replaced them with Oak stair treads with the bullnoze on it. It was kind of interesting because I wanted to screw and Liquid Nail them into place but I didn't want the screw heads to show. I used those pan head screws and a flat drillbit in a countersink design that I later pluged with Oak Dowels glued into the holes to hid the screws. I also covered the face of the risers with 1/4" gypsum boards.

Part three - Stair landings:
This part has taken me a long time. Its a simple glue up made out of 6-8" boards to form a 3'-0" x 3'-0" landing. Actually, I need to make two of these. And I'm still working on them as a matter of fact. I bought myself a jointer and a planer. It turns out the tables (infeed & outfeed) of the jointer were just a hair out of alignment. They were not coplanar and it was causing snipe in the jointed edges. A slight bow that I couldn't use for successful glue up. I fixed it and it's nice and tight on the dry fit. So I used a biscuit jointer to cut some slots for # 20 biscuits. I clamed them yesterday and the instructions on the glue say to wait for 24 hours. And that's where it is now, in the clamps.

I forsee a lot of sanding for my eavenings worth of work tonight. But I'll tell you one thing. I'm feeling very satisfied with my work. What's that term I hear a lot? Pride in craftsmanship. That's it.

Anyway. I'll take some photographs later and post them here.

[Keystone]

Hey Jay, WELCOME TO THE FORUM!

Look forward to seeing those stairs...........

[rrich]

Hello Jay.
Welcome to the asylum.

My preference is white oak rather than red for stair treads. But that is just me.

[jay portland]

Originally posted by rrich:

Hello Jay.
Welcome to the asylum.

My preference is white oak rather than red for stair treads.
But that is just me.

rrich,
I should have been a little more descriptive. I actually did use white oak for the stair treads themselves. But I had to compormise for the landings. The place I buy my stock only had red oak bullnosing availavle. and it was going to be about a 3 week wait for the white oak.

Being new to the woodworking sceen, I asked the woodworking experts at WoodCrafters in Portland about using these two different species of wood. Dave (the expert) told me since I would be staining the visible portions of the wood cherry and then painting the majority of the treads and the landings, there wouldn't really be need to order the white oak bullnosing. I might be a fool sometimes, but I'm going to trust his judgement on this one and make up my mind later.

I do have a question for you rrich; What is the difference between white oak and red oak? After sanding my glued up landing yesterday, I have to admit they look very similar. In fact so similar I couldn't tell the difference between the White Oak verniered stair treads, and my Red Oak Glued-up landing.

[Keystone]

Red Oak has an open grain. White Oak has a very tight grain.

That's the easy way to say it Jay. White Oak is used to make wine and whiskey barrels as well as ship hulls. The tight grain does not allow water to pass through. Although it is called "White" it can often have different shades of browns such as a coffee color in it.

The open grain of Red oak is porous. Many people like the grain of red oak better than white (not me).

For a more in depth guide to the properties of hardwoods [link:www.hardwood.org/species_guide/display_species.asp|click here]

[alexh]

,
The place I buy my
>stock only had red oak bullnosing availavle. and it was
>going to be about a 3 week wait for the white oak.
>


This is absurd. I'm not a contractor and I did my stairs in Brazilian Cherry which is somewhat exotic for stairs and I had no problem getting stock - even hand rails.

Even home depot carries white oak stair parts where I live.

[rrich]

Jay,
As Ken said, porosity. I've seen smoke blown through 4-5 inches of red oak.

I made a single step for between the house and garage. The tread is white oak and the facia on the box around the step is red oak. I used glued up white for the tread but quarter sawn.

The supporting box is plywood and along the concept of a toe kick torsion box construction. The toe kick was scribed to the floor and glued to the floor. The box is also anchored to the wall with screws into the wall studs.

I finished everything with Minwax Polycrylic. It's holding up well and no noticable wood movement problems with all the humidity we've had out here this summer. (Most unusual summer and my A/C has been removed waiting for construction for most of the summer.)

[jay portland]

Hey guys,
Well I had a very productive weekend. I have some photos I want to share with you. At this point, I still have to plug the screw holes with the dowels and cut them flush. I will have to sand it once more but I'm looking forward to fishing this project soon.

Enjoy the photos.

http://www.slshipp.com/zoo/ayala/pho...s/dscf0001.jpg

http://www.slshipp.com/zoo/ayala/pho...s/dscf0015.jpg

http://www.slshipp.com/zoo/ayala/pho...s/dscf0011.jpg

http://www.slshipp.com/zoo/ayala/pho...s/dscf0013.jpg

[jay portland]

Hey guys,
I wanted to ask a question about the glue-up landings I made. I found I had a hard time with the initial sanding. I'll tell you what I mean and then I'll ask for some advice.

After I applied glue to all of the slots and biscuits, I then ran a roller on all of the edges that were going to be glued together. Once that was done I did a quick assembly and tightened down the clamps. I followed advice in other posts for glue-ups where it was said that they tightened their clamps just enough to squeze some glue out but not so tight it would be putting a lot pressure between the boards. Also I staggered the clamps, one under, one over, and so on.

I waited 24 hours then I un-clamped the assembly. The glue that sqeesed out was dried on the top side all along each seam. I decided to sand all of that down with my random orbit sander and 60 grit paper. It tooke me about 1/2 hour of sanding.

Now I'm definetly a novice wood worker but I know there has to be an easier way to do this. My main goal was to get rid of the dried squeesed-up glue from the jointed edges, and once that was done, I would have sanded the entire landing. My thought was since I have to sand it anyway, I'll just knock down the glue while I'm sanding the landing smooth. It worked out okay, but it took me way too long in my oppinion and I'm almost sure there has to be a better more efficient way to get rid of that glue.

I don't have a manual block planer yet, but I was thinking, would it have been easier to block plane the glue off first, then sand the entire landing smooth?

My question to you guys is this. When you experts make glue-ups, what are your methods? I think my methods are pretty close, but being a novice, I think that what I've done is taking too long. 30 mintues worth of sanding with my random orbit sander? I'm going to wear it out in no time.

[rrich]

If the glue is dry, a scraper would work rather well.

If the glue is wet and fresh, a wet rag, turned and rinsed frequently works very well.

If it is yellow glue and you allow it to dry to about the consistency of mucus, just sort of lift it off with a sharp chisel. This works the best with the least work.