Arthur2 wrote:
"John Rumm" wrote in message
...
Arthur2 wrote:

I was looking thru ebay at that idea earlier. The engineered wood
laminates appealed
to me as you get real wood surface. However, a potential buyer
might see a downside
in thinking it wil wear out in 5 years and need replacing.. I like
this

The real engineered flooring materials have several mm of wood on top
(often about 6mm), such that you can sand them down a number of
times. They are in a different league to your typical laminate.

Something like:

http://www.vanillawoodfloors.co.uk/p...roducts_id=251

(the above is not a recommendation of the company - I have never used
them)

could probably be used directly as a tread

It would be better to find a laminate with the deepest possible
real wood layer I think.

You could make your own just by gluing thinish real wood onto your
mdf base, and adding a suitable full depth nosing.


I think this thread got distracted by the 'shooter' discussion.
Whats wrong with a flush/trim cutter with the router?
One with a bearing diameter greater than the diameter of the cutter.

Piece of 6mm mdf gripping the wood from below via 2 half inch nails.

Must be easy.

Arthur

Arthur,

One of my replies to you has failed to appear - but when you machine a board
with any form of circular cutter it leaves the shape of that cutter in it
(albeit minutely in the scheme of things) that can be described as 'waves'.

Briefly, if you glue two boards together without any further planing
(shooting) then the glue will only stick to the high points of the 'wave'
thus reducing strength and the boards will also be prone to joint splitting
when in use - this will apply equally to the traditional 'cut' timber and
manufactured board such as MDF, plywood, weyroc etc.

As a matter of interest, did you look at the drawings of a stairs and
riser/tread details that I posted for your information on tinypics.com.
Those drawings use stock timber that should be readily available in almost
any builders merchants or timber yards (the likes of B&Q are unlikely to do
so) and available in most of the common species of timber as stock - and the
less common on 'special' order.

My personal advice (if you intend to make these stairs) would be to 'stick'
with a natural timber of around 14 - 18% moisture content and of the correct
sizes to avoid jointing, read a good textbook on the subject - especially
for the most important part - the setting-out.

The setting out is *vital* as all the risers *MUST* be of the same height
and the treads the same thickness and depth to avoid trips and falls - and
this applies to whatever materials you use.


Brian G

The setting out is *vital* as all the risers *MUST* be of the same height
and the treads the same thickness and depth to avoid trips and falls - and
this applies to whatever materials you use.

Of course all real world stairs will have some variation, however
small. I'd be interested to hear what the limits in acceptable error
is.

I've just built my first stair, in a chapel conversion - so there's a
lot of variation in the building to accommodate.

Mine is a u-shaped stair, climbing 3.2m in 5,2,11 steps (superimposed
made up treads and risers on top of rough carcassed carriages), and
the error on the going probably 3mm variation (in 285mm), error in
rising 4mm (in 178mm) - apart from the bottom step where a twist in
the ground floor relative to the upper floor resulted in a 10mm
variation at one side (of a 1200mm wide stairway). With hindsight, I
would have made more effort to spread that 2mm at a time over the
bottom 5 steps.

Now I've tried to detect the error by walking up and down in every
conceivable pattern - but other than measuring it, I can neither see
it nor detect it walking up and down.

I seem to vaguely recall 10mm as being the figure for variation in the
rise that's likely to be detectable.

wrote:

I seem to vaguely recall 10mm as being the figure for variation in the
rise that's likely to be detectable.

You can easily end up with that much variation at the top or bottom just
in variation of floor covering thickness... I guess if every step was
10mm different from the previous, then you would feel it!

--
Cheers,

John.

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