Designing with Stainless Steel Posts

Stainless Steel Post Layout

Today was a great day for laying out stainless steel posts.  One of the things that made this day great was traveling in my small plane to Lake Huron to meet with a customer and help him layout the posts before we fabricate the stainless steel pieces so that he can run cable rail between them.

First I’ll show you a picture of the flying machine that got me to Lake Huron.

We have created a cardboard system of templates and string to visualize the cable locations.  Since it is very difficult to drill brushed and polished stainless steel on a job site, we want to get the measurements correct so that they can be drilled and polished in our factory before being shipped to the customer.

Here is a picture of the custom layout of the cardboard piece.

Notice that we put a piece of the hardwood flooring under the post so that the post is at the proper height.  We used another piece of flooring to put on the top of the wall to simulate the cap.  This installation is unique in that the post is being mounted to the floor rather than mounting the post on top of the first step.  Because the post is being mounted on the floor, this post must be longer and it will have the holes start higher up the post.

Next we setup of a series off strings so that our customer could see where the cables will run in relationship. to the wall and the post.

We put custom notes on the cardboard post showing the hole locations so that we can cut, drill and polish them in our shop.

I’m looking forward to showing pictures of the completed project.