John,  If you send my your original question I will send it to the Old
House list I'm on and see what I can glean from there.  Somebody must be on
both lists because that's where I learned about this list, and I'm so glad
I did, it provides the comic relief I need from Alzheimer's caregiving.
Ruth




At 6:59 PM -0500 4/9/04, John Callan wrote:
This sounds reasonable Ralph, but you are an Archeeeeetect.  Can we get a
Carpenter to confirm?

-jc

On Apr 9, 2004, at 6:01 PM, [log in to unmask] wrote:

In a message dated 4/9/2004 5:53:29 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
So?  How difficult is it to disassemble a newel post, stair rail and
 the spindles?  What are the challenges?
Spindles shouldn't be too bad; you pry the nosings off the stringers, and
then have to worry about whether the tops of the balusters are nailed in,
in addition to being set into holes on the underside of the handrail.  The
dovetails in the bottom of the balusters will probably have been nailed in
place.  I don't know that there's any avoiding splitting some of the tops
of the nailed balusters, so you'll have to do it carefully and then reglue
them.  Then you gotta take the handrail off the newels, and that joint may
be nailed or bolted together, so be real careful.  Once you get the
handrails off (they can be held with some sort of weird bolt with nuts at
both ends, so you may want to do some strategic paint stripping at joint
lines before hand), then you gotta figure out how to get the newel off
whatever floor joists it's attached to (probably bolted), without
(preferably) destroying the finish and subfloors.

Then all you gotta do is put it back together.  There must be an Old House
Journal article on this somewhere--- and OLD one, not from the current
advertiser.

Ralph

--
Ruth Barton
[log in to unmask]
Dummerston, VT

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