I’m about to glue up a laminated handrail for a curved staircase that I’m building and am a little puzzled about the code-required dimensions. I planned to make a rectangular cross section that was around 2″ wide by 3″ tall, but it appears that the code requires a maximum perimeter of 6.25″ for this profile. This seems very small.
When researching how to build the curved stairs, I read through several FH articles on the topic. Several of them feature railings that are clearly not conforming to this perimeter spec (for instance, one writer specified the 2″ x 3″ railing size, and there are no side reliefs for graspability)…just wondering if I am reading the code wrong, or are the pros not conforming to this requirement?
Any thoughts appreciated,