FITTING AND ASSEMBLING TIMBER STAIRS

Okay, we're up here on the fourth day. Jay's already gotten after it. And after we cut out our pockets, we're doing the final snug fitting, you see, of our stair trench. Now, I usually cut my pockets a little tight so that I could work them in rather big than tight. You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? Because I keep saying it. Only if you keep watching, I keep saying it. So you see how tight we are right here? I'm a little snug here and right here. And then this bad boy's going to slip in. I'll just show you how quick we're going to fix this. Two guys, production style. I'm like, I'm not even cutting a 32nd of an inch each time. And there we go. Oh, you see how it sits in there. And again, like I showed you with the knee braces, scribe yourself a little pencil mark. Make sure that this thing is sitting flat. Pull it out. Boom. You see where we're at? The pencil mark. We're fully seated. You can go back in. It's that easy. So that's it. I'm on my last four. So I'm just going to take them just like I did this one, go back into my hole, fit it, make sure it fits. Here we go. We're going to get ready to drill and assemble. I think it's the rope still tight. These bad boys. Oh, beautiful. One more time. All right. Well, you see how we sit down there. We're going to start getting these into the pockets, straightened out and just a couple that need right on. Okay. We're going to need the big hammer and the block. So I don't know if this camera's rolling, but you see, I just cut a little wedge, which is going to help us drive. That's all in right there. Got to be right on these two here. Yep. Yep. Yes. Yes. All of them went in. All of them went in. All of them went in. We're in. You see, fellas, no new cuts. Little wedge cut. We had one tiny wedge cut. Look, it's buried in there. You can't see it. That helped us fit this tight. Okay. We are all completely set. We are routed in. I'm happy with everything before we get to sanding and getting these off. These marks that we have put up here on top, these are actually where we're going to mark to make sure that our pins, I'm using this actual piece here for me to measure where I actually have to drill to make a snug fit when I put my wedges in. So just to make life easy and to do a little production style again, I'm going to mark all of these tabs all at once. We're going to take them out. We're going to drill them all at once. At that point, we're going to sand everything down. We're going to wax all of our tabs. I'll drop back in and show you can see that we're actually waxing the tabs, but we're going to get all of our pencil marks off. Everything's going to be sanded down, even though this is the bottom of the staircase. So that's where we're at. Once again, all of these are coming back out. We're going to drill them. And once again, we're going to put them all back together. But hopefully that next time will be the last time. And we're going to pin everything, then get it finished before we move it on down. We have got ourselves a warm March day going on. So I wanted to show you where we're doing how to lay out to drill for your pegs that are going to become your wedges for your staircase. Now this was the line right here. This was the line that it was flush with the outside of the beam right here. So I know that I have a one inch peg. So what I did is I did a quarter inch inlay here into the center so that my peg is actually going to get drilled in like that. So even if I have shrinkage, we can keep moving the pins down and tightening it up. But I've already set up my jig here and my drill press, and I've got it already set to where we need to be. So you really just need to rifle through these six holes. I take these off, mark those six, drill those six, take these off, and then just do it more in like a production style kind of mode. It's much that simple. My gauge is set. I just have to make sure I'm on my... Okay, so you see just how I marked it out. That hole is inside that line. So it's always going to give me room that I can tighten this staircase up. Not that I think I'm ever going to have to, but it's never going to get loose. So there you go. Just punch through all your holes and get that system set up. Then we're going to sand them, wax them, and install them. All right, I'm shaping our pegs, which are our normal pegs that I put in all our buildings. I'm just using my old granddaddy planer here. I've got to set up a bunch. There's my pegs. That's what we're going to use to wedge in. I'm going to take them on a sander, cut this in half, and I'll have two of them. Got it? Simple. That quick. I'm going to finish these up. All right, all our beams look beautifully sanded out, and like I told you, anchor seal. See, we didn't forget it. We are using it, and Jason's using this new one right here because we're going to stain this side. This side sticks out, so he knows he doesn't want to wash that off. Now, these tabs here are actually not getting pocketed through. There's two steps on this that run into the beams that the pockets wouldn't go through, but you'll see how we finish it out. Beautiful. No one's going to notice nothing. Perfect. Anchor seal. Me, finishing pegs. Very simple. I just took you through in there. Now, I put a perfect flat sand on it, and then I'll just finish my end that I know are going to stick out. Now, these have linseed oil on them already, but we're going to put another coat of stain front and back before we put them together. Well, that's it. That simple on making these wedges. Nothing crazy. Made the first test pin I wanted to check out before we drilled all the holes. All I did was take one of my normal pegs, plane a slight angle on this. Watch how this will draw this together, and that's how that's going to look. So, you see I have a bow tie here. We'll probably cut this off a little bit once we're done. You see how tight that holds that against that. All right. We're right here before lunch, even though it's going to be a late lunch, but it is assembly time for the last time. So, me and my boy here are going to see how we do. Boom. Satisfaction. So, this thing's just going together like a Lincoln log set. You notice all our marks. We're doing it step, step. Watch. Next one's going to say five. See, there you go. Make sure you're marked. They didn't get lighter. We sanded and sanded, and they're still that heavy. Tread test. Now, it's not like we haven't had these in here one or ten times. Boom. Here we go for the mega staircase, boys. We're not lined up here good, my friend. All right. Real quick, real quick. One, two, three. There it is. Last one. We did that in the last episode, on the mini episode. There we go, boys. All right. We're going to lift the top, see if we could gently just put it right in there, line everybody up, and poo-poo-padoo. This thing is way too heavy for anybody to be just picking up. Don't get under that, buddy. I'm always scared of that. You all right? Yep. I'm going to extend out. I'm going to come down for you. I need the... Hang on. Let me move the crane. A little more, huh? All right. I went too far. I'm going to rope down a little. I'm in there. I'm going to come down a little more. This one's hanging us right here. Right there. Boom. What do we got? We got this one. Okay. I'm going to come down a little bit more. Rope's loose. Let's try to pull down over here a little bit and get them better tabbed. Can you pull on the beam? There we go. There we go. There it is. Right there. Right there. Right there. Right there. It's just falling in. There we go. There we go. There we go. Oh, shoot, boys. Let's drop. Dropping.