Anyone know where to find balusters like these?
This is a house near where I live. It is a beautiful house from 1890 with a big round deck and turrent. About 5 years ago I drove by and it was just falling to pieces, tried to talk to the owner about buying it but was told by the neighbor that she would never sell. Drove by from time to time and no improvement. Today I drove by and it was fully under renovation. Turns out she died last year and the neighbor bought it….
Now instead of buying it I’ll probably be working on it.
Replies
You have to remove one and get it copied. Or scribe the shape to a template and start making a few.
Finding "stock" replacements will be very tough.
Its an excuse to get a lathe with copier kit!
Research the home, find the architect and maybe you'll find the material supplier. This stair case may have been special order from down the coast. The company may be out of business but knowing where they originated from gives you another city to look to for demo parts.
Look at local salvedge yards or resale houses. Odds are somewhere they've demolished a similar home over the years and the balisters are gathering dust somewhere.
Or like others have said time to get that lathe and duplicator.
Just A Guy With A Hammer
I like your idea about researching the history of the house, but the new owner added on a wing and the new set of stairs has to meet today's code. So even if I could find period balusters they would be too short.
I used to turn those by the dozens but sold my lathe 10 years ago. I did a lot of Victorian porch restorations then.
Shep will spin some out for you. It's probably your best approach.
Think this might be something of interest?
Nice old stair and rail!
Yeah, I'm always interested in turning. How many balusters are missing? Where are you located?
Another option is to go to http://www.woodturner.org , and look in the Find a Local Chapters link to see if there's a local woodturning chapter, and woodturner who might be interested.
Edited 1/31/2009 1:26 pm ET by Shep
Shep,There would be 14 or 16 of them. I'm trying to convince the owner to match to original, but not only would the balusters be custom but so would the rail and box newel. If you look closely at the newel you can see it was hand carved.
I can turn, but carving's a skill I haven't developed.
If it works out, I'd be interested in turning 14-16 balusters. I don't know where you are, but shipping shouldn't be all that much.
Shep,I can do the carving and given enough wood and time I could probably do the turning but I'm no turner, so I might need 3 to get one good one!The material is red oak, looks to be about 1 3/4" dia. I can send a accurate drawing with all the dimensions. Think about pricing, I'm meeting with the owner Wednesday.Location; Seattle Wa
If you look closely, you can see that they were hand-turned.
Look back and forth between two balusters, focusing on the same detail on each, the beads or the urn shape. You'll see that one urn is a bit fatter, or the curve is slightly different.
They usually used a pattern to look at, and a marked reference stick just in back of the work to locate the deep cuts between the beads.
Once the deep cuts were defined, it was a matter of freehanding the rest, and not agonizing over exact duplication.
Sometimes a series of chisels were used with a caliper-like attachment clamped to each, to set the exact depth of each defining cut.
You'd probably get a few rejects that were just too different and had to be thrown away, but usually people will walk up and down those stairs for decades, never noticing any difference between balusters.
AitchKay
I've tried my hand at spindle work. Once you get into a rhyme it gets a little better, but I know my limits. I once was at a stair parts shop where there was a guy who did all the custom turning, he was working and turned a newel post in under 10 minutes while talking to me about what I wanted. I knew then that it was better to leave it to someone who really knew what he was doing. Sadly he suddenly up and quit one day and no one knows where he went.
A lot of stair parts from that time were purchased thru a catalog. If you take that to a GOOD stair shop they can probably find you a pretty close match........
You'll be surprised at what you can find if you look hard enough....and you'll be surprised at how little some profiles have changed over the span of 100 or so years
Maybe find sq.base stock balusters and turn the base round?
Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
Repairs, Remodeling, Restorations
They kill Prophets, for Profits.
how about a picture of the exterior of the house?
Here are some pics.The brown section is the original and the white the add-on. I think it would have been better without the addition, but I've seen worse. The real shame is the fence and retaining wall, it isn't within decades of the right time period. Which is a real shame since there are still a few companies around here doing dry rock walls.
Try this ..
http://www.TheHistoricInterior.com
Your best bet Victorian Renaissance Revival and the Aesthetic Period. They could probably get you started on a platform of research. The duplication of the baluster is secondary to finding the indentity of the wood and grain configuration. Perhaps a tiny core sample to your local Preservation society, would help.
Edited 1/31/2009 9:24 pm ET by alias