I'm looking at Ipe to build about 60 feet of deck railing. My lumberyard
has 1-1/2 x 1-1/2 milled verticals, 4x4 posts, and an assortment of milled
pieces which are obviously meant for the top and bottom rails.

The problem is, while it's clear that they are designed as a system, I
couldn't quite figure out how it all goes together. There were two
different sizes of milled toprail (I'm looking at the smaller one, about
3-1/3" wide, for $6/lf!) but it had a channel milled into the bottom which
was much too wide for the uprights. There were some other pieces with
milled channels that were a perfect fit for the uprights, but no obvious
way to attach to the top rail.

Nobody at the yard seemed to know much about it, and I couldn't find any
literature. Is there some standard system for how all this stuff goes
together, or does each mill come up with their own design?

My contractor is pushing me to go with a white vinyl railing system. It's
not bad, as long as you don't care what it looks like :-)

On Sun, 24 Dec 2006 14:29:53 -0500, Roy Smith wrote:

I'm looking at Ipe to build about 60 feet of deck railing. My lumberyard
has 1-1/2 x 1-1/2 milled verticals, 4x4 posts, and an assortment of milled
pieces which are obviously meant for the top and bottom rails.

The problem is, while it's clear that they are designed as a system, I
couldn't quite figure out how it all goes together. There were two
different sizes of milled toprail (I'm looking at the smaller one, about
3-1/3" wide, for $6/lf!) but it had a channel milled into the bottom which
was much too wide for the uprights. There were some other pieces with
milled channels that were a perfect fit for the uprights, but no obvious
way to attach to the top rail.

Nobody at the yard seemed to know much about it, and I couldn't find any
literature. Is there some standard system for how all this stuff goes
together, or does each mill come up with their own design?

You might fine http://www.ipedepot.com/handrail.htm to be helpful.

My contractor is pushing me to go with a white vinyl railing system. It's
not bad, as long as you don't care what it looks like :-)

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

"J. Clarke" wrote:
You might fine http://www.ipedepot.com/handrail.htm to be helpful.

Thanks -- that does help.

I built a railing for my ipe deck out of standard 1x6 decking material.
I didn't feel like paying such high prices for the various milled
pieces. Since I was able to get a great deal on the standard decking
material (surplus from a firm that installed it as flooring in semi
trailers), I just bought enough extra to make railing parts.

I ran each piece of decking through my drum sander to get good mating
surfaces, then glued the planking into 1.5" stock. From that I cut out
handrails, toprails, bottom rails and balusters. I even glued up some
extra thick stock to make post caps. The only "special" pieces I
purchased was the 4x4 posts.

It was a bigger job, but the railings came out great, and I saved a
bundle of money.