How to Layout Iron Baluster Spacing on Staircase - Wood Tread Handrail Spindle Layout

Welcome back to the Insider Carpentry channel. In this video we cover baluster layout. Be sure to let me know if you have any questions or comments below and hope you enjoy the video. So first thing I'm going to do is put down some tan masking tape. That's going to allow me to have something I can easily see my pencil marks with and that way I'm also not getting pencil all over the nice treads. The tape will also serve to help protect the treads whenever I'm installing the balusters using adhesive. If you get adhesive on raw wood it'll often block stain from penetrating and that can lead to problems later down the road. Next I'm going to use my combination square to mark the center line of my handrail where all the balusters will go. Using a double square or combination square works best for this. To get the location of this line you can just find the center point of your newel post and then put your square on the outside of the tread and align the end of your combination square with the center post of your newel and that's also going to be the handrail line that you want to follow. Now the next step in the layout process is going to be to figure out the baluster spacing. One note that's kind of important whenever you're laying out balusters most stair guys will tell you that a good principle to go by is to line up the front edge of your baluster with the front edge of the riser. That also makes layout a lot easier. That's what I typically always do unless I have some really weird circumstance to deal with. So that's what we'll be doing here. The first thing that we need to know is what the run is. Now it's important don't confuse the overall tread width with the run. The run is the front of riser to front of riser run. I don't know what else how else to say it. So front of riser to front of riser that's going to be 10 inches in this case not the 11 and a quarter tread length. So we're going to use that number 10 inches to find our baluster spacing. Now I know I have half inch iron balusters here and I'm going to have three of them per tread. So the math is really simple. I'm going to take 10 inches minus an inch and a half which is three half inch balusters and then I'm going to divide that by three and that's going to give me three spaces of two and 13 sixteenths. As you can see here I cut a jig 10 inches long which represents my run front of riser to front of riser. So I can push this to the back and the front of this is going to line up with the front of the riser. So from there I'm going to start out my layout. Now I don't I want to find the center points and be able to transfer those center points onto my tread. The reason I want center points is to mortise these I'm going to be using a drill bit which to use correctly I need to know the exact center and then we'll use the square bit to square them up. I found my centers and squared down those lines so from here it's just a matter of transferring those center points onto each tread. One of the important principles of carpentry is to avoid mistakes when it really matters and in this case we're going to be putting holes in these lovely white oak treads so we don't want to screw that up. So that's one of the reasons I'm using a jig here and whenever you do use a jig make sure that you double check and triple check it for accuracy but once you do that you know you can trust it and you're not going to make a mistake as you go along whereas if you were trying to individually measure and mark with your tape measure you'd be a lot more likely to make a mistake that could really screw something up. One important thing to mention here is to make sure that your runs are consistent. I know that I have 10 inches or at least really close to that on all of these runs. If you have inconsistency in your framing and let's say some of your runs are 10, some are 10 and a quarter, some are nine and seven eighths, you're going to need to be a little bit more careful with your layout. A jig won't work as well for that. An important note on newel post placement whenever you're placing your newels I like to try and make it so the space between the edge of my newel and my baluster is the same as my baluster spacing and that's how I determine where I want to locate my newel. So you'll see here the space between my newel and the front of my riser is the same as my baluster spacing. I also wanted to show here same principle applies we've made the jig for the easy. Now I've got this off angle which is at 26 degrees so I cut another piece 26 degrees 26 degrees minus an inch and a quarter nosing and I can put my marks on there and then transfer those to each step also. So now that I've got all my center points laid out on my treads before I mortise these it's really important I transfer that center point up onto the underside of my handrail. Now to me there's probably a lot of different ways that you can do this but what I always do is just use my trusty PLS 180 laser going on about 10 years with this thing it just won't die and I just line up the laser with my center point and I just take my pencil and mark across that handrail move it over same thing. All right time out for a second I just about screwed something up got a little ahead of myself making the video and thinking about that instead of carpentry work. This is really important a long handrail like this whenever you put it in place even if it was straight when you put it up it's going to sag a little bit without having any support in there and what happens is whenever it sags that's going to throw off your marks from where they're supposed to be so then if you have the sag in it and you mark your holes on the underside there bore them and then put that handrail back up and and try and straighten it later it's going to screw things up. So right now what I need to do is I need to make sure that that is still running perfectly straight and if it's not I need to put a temp support in there to give it some support and help it support its own weight and I'll show you why here. Let's go around to the underside of this handrail now you can see here where this laser's at and I just marked that but watch what happens whenever I push up or pull down on this handrail see how it's throwing off where that mark is so that's really important it's really important to watch that before you start marking out your holes. Thankfully this one was pretty close to straight but I'm gonna I'm gonna double check it here before I go any further and if I need to I'll erase these marks that I've got in the center here and redo them. One of the easiest ways to check and see if the handrail is nice and straight is to grab a long level and use that so here you can see my long level see I've got about an eighth inch gap so I need to prop this up a little bit it's not terrible but not great either. Now I can see I don't know if you can see it or not but that threw off my mark about a 16th inch so I'm going to go ahead and erase these through here and just redo those quick. Now we're back in business and off to the races again as you can see again using the PLS 180 just a line laser set on the plumb setting to hit my marks and plumb up to the bottom side of that handrail. Same process up top on this off angle just make sure that your laser is perpendicular to the handrail as best as you can doesn't have to be perfect. So now the underside of the handrail is marked for all the balusters and this is possibly the most important part of this process. You need to double check to make sure you didn't make any mistakes with your layout and the easiest way to do that is to measure the spacing on the underside of your handrail to make sure that that is consistent and it's going to be really easy to pick up a mistake if you made one by measuring. So I'll show you what I mean I've got all of my marks on the underside here so now I'm just going to take my tape and measure just doesn't have to be exact but just getting close between each of my marks and those should all be close to the same and by close I mean I'm talking within an eighth inch or so but if you made a mistake and let's say I've got a three quarters of an inch difference that's a dead giveaway. It's important to remember even the best most experienced carpenters make stupid mistakes every day but the truly great carpenters and productive carpenters know when it matters and know how to not make mistakes when it matters. So in situations like this if I miss something and I just go to town putting these holes in it could be a disaster I could ruin the whole handrail I could put a hole in a tread in the wrong place but by double checking in the end you'll be much more productive and I think this is a situation where you can say slow makes smooth smooth makes fast just take a little time make sure you're doing it right before you go to town making holes in stuff and life is just a lot less stressful that way. At this point I'll go ahead and check all my measurements make sure I've got consistent spacing and then I can take the clamps off my handrail and take the handrails down. Before you take the handrails down you may want to make some marks on the newel post that way you can easily get those back exactly where they were before. Hope you guys enjoyed this video on baluster layout be sure to check out the previous video on balcony layout and mortising the balcony shoe rail and handrail. The next video will be about how to tackle the mortises on the rake how to mortise them how to make square mortises in the treads as well as the handrail with the hollow chisel tilt mortiser so be sure to stay tuned for that. Thanks for watching don't forget to like and subscribe and we'll see you on the next video.