In article , Ernie Leimkuhler
wrote:

In article , John Flanagan
wrote:

On Thu, 10 Jul 2003 13:12:39 -0700, Ernie Leimkuhler
wrote:

The most critical part is not to allow the tube to rotate, or you end
up with a spiral.
I usually take the length of tube, and nest it into a length of angle
iron, then use the edeg of the angle iron to sharpie marker a line all
the way down the tube.
This way you have a reference line to keep the tube from rotating
accidentally.

Very tricky, that's the thing I was wondering about the most. How to
draw a line straight down the side of a tube! Good idea.

But really, $12,000, how much time did it take you? I just want to
know in case there's some room for competition :^).


About 2 weeks on and off.
We had to get the handrails roughed in fast so they could pass their
mechanical inspection.
We came back a week later to start the clean up work.

The railings ran up both sides of a set of stairs that came up in the
middle of the lobby.
The stairs lead to a short bridge that angled towards the stairwell
that wrapped up around an elevator shaft, and ended at the second floor
lobby.
So the outside perimeter handrail ended up being a continuous tube
about 70 feet long and the inside rail about 50 feet.
For the lower stairs and bridge there already existed a steel rail
system that was built with the stairs.
I had to add the grip tube in 2" brushed stainless.
So we had to hack holes in the walls to glue plywood to the back of the
drywall for the supports, then patch the holes.
Then mount the supports and play connect the dots with 2" brushed
stainless tubing.
Then weld in the elbows.
A week later we came back, sawzalled the rails apart into long pieces,
finished the welds in a temporary shop we set up in the building, grind
all the welds smooth, place the finished rail sections back on their
supports, weld the sections back together in place, sand off those
welds, and finally buff the whole length with scotchbrite.

Easy really.


BTW I thought I would save money when ordering the elbows from RB
Wagner, by ordering 180 deg turns and then cut the actual angle needed
from that 180 degrees.
I figured I could get several short angles for each turn.
What I didn't count on was that to draw a 2" tube around a 180 deg turn
necessarily reduces it's outside diameter.
It made for some really tricky welds, and then trying to blend out
those weld beads without grinding through the tube wall.

Next time I will order more elbows with shorter arcs.

BTW RB Wagner are great guys.

http://www.rbwagner.com/

They did some 1 day turnaround brushed stainless 180 degree turns I
needed for another job, on a Friday afternoon before a holiday and
actually got them shipped out before the end of the day.
Love those guys.
Bernice is in charge of orders and while her picture in their catalog
isn't very flattering, she is a great lady.