"Tom Watson" wrote in message
...
So, I've taken this job with a stair company. They have been in
business since the 1920's. They have a great record on the kit stair
retail side and they are expanding into the high end custom stair
side.

I went on a straight stair railing installation wrap up the other day
and their mechanic, who has been with them for seventeen years was
cutting the rail to yield with no thought given to color and grain
continuity.

I don't know about y'all, but when I run a line of rail I want it to
look like it came from one continuous piece of wood. That means that
the cathedral arches all point up and the rail sections are selected
for color and grain.

I was watching the guy just lop up the longest pieces for the longest
runs and then fit in the offcuts wherever they fit.

Could have looked a lot better.

This kind of thing goes all the way back to the shop floor. I watched
their guy grab sticks from the rack and feed them into the molder with
no check for grain direction to feed and no look at different pieces
to see if the grain and color could be made to match. He bitched when
the molder chunked out on him but didn't seem to get that there was a
right and wrong way to feed the machine.

WTF?

I'm the FNG and I didn't think it my place to comment but maybe it is
what they meant when the said that they hired me to upgrade their wood
end, they being basically makers of iron stairs who think of the wood
facings as an afterthought. I've seen their risered stairs and there
is no apparent thought given to the direction of the arches, which I
have always oriented left to right. The same applys to the treads.

Also, they have platforms that they glue up out of oak and they show
no intent regarding grain orientation during glue up. I can
understand varying arguments on this - some might say that all bark
side should be up for compressive strength and wearing and others
might say that grain orientation should be reversed on each piece for
planar stability - but there seemed to be no pattern.

I have had a theory for a long time that if you paid attention to
these things in a building - the building would begin to sing.

One of my biggest hard ons when I was doing carpentry was about the
relative heights of the top of the trim on doors and windows.

It was too often the case that the molding line at the top of the
doors would be different than those on the windows.

If you take the time to make those lines marry, you get a rhythm to
the room that gives you some visual peace. It is a small element that
is worth paying attention to.

This goes back to design level and needs to be caught on the drawings.

Another one used to be the door at the end of a hallway where the trim
was pinned on one side and there was three inches of wall space on the
other side. That looks like ****. Once again. the framer may be
following the print to the titts but the product is wrong.

Man, I shouldn't have gotten started on this.

How about the down lights in a ceiling that follow no apparent
pattern. Has no one ever heard of a reflected ceiling plan?

Alright - I'm done for now. It is just that the little things add up
and make a difference about how you feel about a room, a building, or
an element. You can create rhythm and harmony in a room or house by
following certain principles and those spaces will be a greater joy to
their occupants than the typical slapdash bull**** that goes on in
this business.



t.


t.
Reminds me of a fellow who used to come out to visit with my Dad back in
the '50s. He rode a BMW because the Harleys just weren't perfect
enough...leaked oil all over the place. When he got there, he would take
his boots off and walk around bare footed. Dad said that the guy couldn't
stand to feel the imperfections in the bottoms of his boots. When his BMW
deleloped an oil leak that put one drop of oil on the garage floor
overnight, he damn near went crazy trying to find the cause and fix it. He
finally had to be committed to some kind of hospital for treatment. Never
been much of a perfectionist myself, but it did always bother me when I saw
a stair rail that looked like it had been made of several short pieces of
wood of several different species.

Tom G.