Ryan McClure

All¹ of the stairs and risers are cut to their proper 30″ width² now. I spent a good chunk of time on Sunday calculating the angles and drawing the templates for the stringers. It was fun to put high school trig to practical use, and I’d be lying if I weren’t indulging in a little “take that!” thinking toward all of the anti-math/anti-school miscreants I grew up around³.

As a result of the circular saw being, well, circular, I’ve actually got some corners in the risers that still need to be cut. I’ll probably just do that with a hacksaw, since it’s small and most of the cutting was already done by the circular saw. Once that’s done, I’ll lay the cut stringer onto the uncut stringer board and use it as a template. With those cut, it’ll be time to sand and stain everything⁴.

Once everything is stained, I’ll tear down the old stairs and put up the new stringers. From there, it’ll just be a simple matter of drilling pilot shafts and screwing the steps and risers into the stringers. Depending on how secure the stringers feel, I’ll either put the support struts in before I do the steps and risers, or once everything is assembled.

All told, I’m hoping to have this entire thing complete by next weekend, so I can start working on the vacuform table in earnest. I’ll post pictures of the whole process once it’s complete.

1. 10 and 10, anyway. I will actually need an additional riser on each end of the stairs if I want to fully close them off. I may not bother, though, since for basement stairs having risers at all is sort of unnecessary [↩]
2. Well, mostly 30″. I managed to get some variation in them despite repeated measuring and laser guides on my circular saw, but c’est la vie [↩]
3. To those that I grew up around that were not anti-math/anti-school, I salute you! [↩]
4. Everything, that is, except the support boards. Those still need to be measured and cut, but those will be very quick, since there are only six total. [↩]