"Don Young" wrote in message
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"Phisherman" wrote in message
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On Tue, 13 Jun 2006 17:20:26 -0700, "Eigenvector"
wrote:

I need to make a railing for my front porch, but the length of the porch
is
about 186 inches long (~16 feet). So far as I know that's longer than a
single 2x4, which is what the railing is now. The current solution is to
have 2 2x4's come together nailed to a vertical stringer but that looks
crappy and the railing is wobbly and uneven.

So how do I make a nice stable top railing out of 2 pieces of lumber
coming
together and still keep the same stringer dimensions? The only thing I
could think of would be 2 stringers joined together to provide a solid
mounting surface for both rails but then it would look uneven as I would
have like 15 normal stringers and 1 double stringer.


Many hand rails are made from laminated pieces which provides both
interesting curves and incredible strength. You could do something
similar by ripping 1/4" strips of 2x4s, glue them using outdoor wood
glue, and clamp them with as many clamps as you can get your hands on.
Trim off the edges, sand and sand and sand, then finish. A staggered
butt joint here and there won't make much noticeable difference. As
you glue up the strips make sure they are positioned against a
straightedge (I might use a snapped chalk line).

You could also use 2 (or even 3) layers of 1x4's and stagger the joints.
It might even look better than a single 2x4.
Don Young
I hadn't thought of using laminate boards. That would look better, say 2 8
foot 1x4's laminated together - the shorter length would make it easier to
find straighter boards and since it's not exactly 16 feet, cutting 2 1x4's
short and using them to stagger the joint would look attractive and make the
joint that much stronger - say I could use a staggered diagonal or V-notch
cut to stabilize the side to side motion.

That's not a bad idea. The only issue would be dealing with uneven cupping
of the boards over time - and even glue wouldn't prevent that from
happening.