r/oddlysatisfying • u/Mint_Perspective • 2d ago
Final Boss of Woodworking: Crafting the Pitch-Perfect Stair Railing
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u/ShogsKrs 2d ago
I can't even imagine how that was achieved.
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u/aitaix 2d ago
Steam
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u/jigglywigglydigaby 2d ago
Steam and compound miters. You can see the joinery towards the end of the video. Common practice for railings like this....but not easy to accomplish even for experienced tradespeople.
The guy in the video reminds me of the person I was apprenticed by. Whenever I'd do something that required a lot of skill, patience, and stress to have it finished perfect, he'd say the same thing.
"Good, you did your job. Now what's next?" Lol.
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u/PhthaloVonLangborste 2d ago
Jobs not done until you clean up
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u/Newiebraaah 2d ago
You ever met an electrician?
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u/DownwardSpirals 2d ago
Most people are shocked when they learn I'm a bad electrician.
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u/Over_n_over_n_over 2d ago
Really? My wife got soaking wet when she found out I was a terrible plumber!
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u/SpicyPickle101 2d ago
I did a laminated mahogany rail about this long for a boat. About 350 man hours from start to install.
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u/HumanContinuity 2d ago
Love and hate that kind of old timer. Mostly love though.
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u/jigglywigglydigaby 2d ago
I was very, very fortunate to train with him and a few others over a decade before going on my own.
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u/HeyItsTheJeweler 2d ago
Lmao I had a watchmaker friend like this. You go from joy to frustration in record time. Man i miss that guy.
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u/jigglywigglydigaby 2d ago
Yeah lol, I sure didn't appreciate my tutor during the time....but am so grateful to have had him mentor me.
I really miss him walking by while I'd be working on something, he'd stop and stare for a moment then say "hmph..... interesting." Then just walk away. Lmao, I'd instantly think "wth am I doing wrong!?!" and stress about my procedures. Now I fully realize his intentions all along were to force me to analyse my work. Always think about the best way to accomplish a task. Just because a process works in one situation doesn't mean it will for all others.
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u/tabulasomnia 2d ago
After placing the thing on the thing he just casually asks for nails. Turkish usta's are a different breed.
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u/ChiggaOG 2d ago
Yes indeed. Plenty of steam and a long time heating in high humidity environment.
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u/mikesalami 2d ago
Ya but how do you achieve that precise curvature?
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u/ChiggaOG 2d ago
A bunch of clamps and time.
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u/badtoy1986 2d ago
And tweaking and some additional fitting.
This video is after all the fittings were complete. I'm sure it was taken out and final sanded before filming this. Of course it was going to fit.
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u/mikesalami 2d ago
I would imagine it'd be quite difficult to somehow measure precisely the curvature and then recreate it exactly though.
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u/turbo_dude 2d ago
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u/metalshoulder 2d ago
Hey, thanks so much for posting that link. What an incredible website. I never knew it existed so have bookmarked for future reference.
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u/Radiant-Criticism721 2d ago
...that link is so useful. I hope all the good things in life happen to you
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u/patricktherat 2d ago
Totally. I find it amusing sometimes how such simplified answers get upvoted so much as if they really figured anything out. Give anyone here a bunch of clamps and time and there is zero chance this could be built. I'm sure the whole process is incredibly complex with lots of tricks learned through many years of experience. I too would love to know how the precise curvature is actually achieved.
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u/WolfOfPort 2d ago
Moulds around it not free handed
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u/mikesalami 2d ago
How do you make the moulds? Lol
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u/Vanilla_PuddinFudge 2d ago
Just like they did in the 1800's. First, Jedidiah launches a drone that does a 360-degree scan of the staircase and imports it into an application that uses AI to determine the exact curvature, then he 3D-prints the piece out of wood PLA in your standard 1800's 3D-printer.
nod
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u/Convenientjellybean 2d ago
Video is in reverse, it’s a demolition job. Well, i feel better thinking that
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u/crackheadwillie 2d ago
I was a woodshop apprentice in high school for a small stair-building company. We didn't use steam. Yes lots of math, but not steam. We'd built a large drum, a curved wall with many studs. Then we'd thinly slice long pieces of wood. We applied glue to the sliced wood and bend them around the drum with clamps. Once dried, we tooled the wood down using routers and sanders. We usually used hard woods like oak. Our clients were generally wealthy. For instance we built a staircase for actor Robin Williams at his home in Napa.
It sold for $18M in 2014.
This video shows some of the handrails: https://youtu.be/sDqSo9GMdFU?si=DKyysRLQW6BvxtQZ&t=183 (See 3:00 minute mark)
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u/Vixtorgomes 2d ago
Are there video games on there that teach how to do this?
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u/YouLikeReadingNames 2d ago
If we have a fuckton of truck simulators, one indie team should be able to come up with woodworking simulator. Bonus point if your character has a Ron Swanson skin.
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u/Ancient2 2d ago
Thats the easy part.. we all know that.. bringing the dry piece up and it fits properly, even with shrinkage since it dried, shows an incredible amount of engineering and talent. Amazing.
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u/ChipDusters 2d ago
Not steam. The rail is cut in slices and glued in a form. Rails are almost never bent with steam because of the thickness of the material and the short window of time steam requires to get the material into the forms before it cools.
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u/ExplosiveDioramas 2d ago
He must have made some kind of mold that he brought back to his shop. Nothing else is comprehensible for me.
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u/RetroSwamp 2d ago
This old dude is a woodworking legend
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u/5D5hot 2d ago
You can definitely tell by how he slaps his wood
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u/tabulasomnia 2d ago
Actually, after placing the thing on the thing, he just casually asks for nails. Turkish usta's are a different breed.
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u/SoraXes 2d ago
He looks like he could make a puppet that turns into a real boy.
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u/danbyer 2d ago
What’s wrong with your camera?
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u/DogVacuum 2d ago
You smear a little Vaseline on the lens, and it makes him look like a sexy, slutty craftsman.
Old trick of the trade.
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u/Aselleus 2d ago
Much like Barbara Streisand.
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u/Hari_Seldom 2d ago
Real answer: Dude just touched their camera a lot and didn't wipe it clean. Oily unwashed hands do this. Usually people know to wipe their lens occasionally, but not this guy
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u/ZankTheGreat 2d ago
Or the lens is cracked/removed. I dropped my phone years ago and never got the camera lens replaced, all pictures and videos look like this.
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u/Ok-Push9899 2d ago
Guy was cameraman for NCIS back in the day. Once you go soft focus, you never go back.
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u/canman7373 2d ago
The old man had to craft the camera before this to record it. He's still working on his lens work.
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u/anotherNarom 2d ago
It's not the camera, it's steam.
They didn't just stick the wood in a box to steam and bend, they did it for the whole stairwell.
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u/SeattleHasDied 2d ago
Now that is some solid craftsmanship, wow!
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u/Carbon-Base 2d ago
A master woodworker at work!
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u/tuigger 2d ago
How much wood could a wood worker work if a wood worker could work wood?
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u/Columbus43219 2d ago
They used his spinal x-ray for the model.
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u/anarrowview 2d ago
My first thought was “this man’s spine reflects how much time he’s spent on his life’s works”.
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u/misplaced_my_pants 2d ago
Preventable with regular strength training btw.
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u/Automatic_Soil9814 2d ago
Doctor here. This isn’t just bad posture. This pronounced kyphosis is due to small vertebral fractures leading to wedged shaped vertebral bodies. It’s a bone density issue, not strength. See: little old ladies with a dowager hump.
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u/misplaced_my_pants 2d ago
Strength training increases bone density though. Wouldn't that be protective even of vertebral bone density?
It's not as though the little old ladies were strength training.
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u/Automatic_Soil9814 2d ago
This is a great point and illustrates how complex interpreting the medical literature can be.
When approaching a clinical question from an evidence-based perspective, the classic approach is to review the literature, identify any flaws in the literature, and then apply what we learned to a given patient. Let’s do that today:
First, Let’s establish some basic agreed-upon facts. One is that, Generally speaking, people lose some bone density every year starting an early childhood. A second fact is that women lose BMD more quickly than men.
Now let’s focus on your question: can regular strength training prevent osteoporosis?
If you look at the literature you can find studies where people are randomized Into exercise programs or controls and their bone mineral density (BMD) is compared. In these studies, over a few years you can see reduced BMD loss and in some cases BMD gains. So that means regular weight-bearing exercise can preserve BMD, correct?
That’s where it gets complicated. Remarkably, the studies that I just reviewed to answer your comment omit some observations. For example, if regular exercise preserved BMD, older female athletes should have excellent BMD. However it is easy to demonstrate that there is unfortunately not the case. In fact, you can even see low BMD in A number of young female athletes.
What I think is happening here is if you take a group of sedentary people and you start them on an exercise program, it will induce bone remodeling and increase bone mineral density, but this affect only lasts a couple years before it is limited by the overall trend of loss of bone mineral density with age.
A second observation is that it is very difficult to induce increased BMD even with medication. Our medications for osteoporosis like bisphosphonates only slow the rate of BMD loss, and do not result in BMD gains. You have to use advance biologic medications like Prolia and even then the gains are very small and any discontinuation of treatment results in rapid BMD loss.
Taken together, this shows that neither exercise nor medication is capable of preserving BMD over a long period of time.
So how do we apply this information to the man in the video?
The man in the video appears to be in his 70s approximately. Men at this age have reduced bone density but rarely have osteoporosis. This man has such severe osteoporosis that he suffered many small compression fractures leading to pronounced kyphosis. That’s an indication that he has some abnormality, likely endocrine, that has led to much more accelerated loss of BMD.
I think it is possible that a weight-bearing exercise regimen could have slowed his rate of BMD loss, but it is highly unlikely that it would’ve led to BMD gains. This would’ve reduced the risk of osteoporosis, however it would not have prevented it. There is a big difference between a small decrease in risk and “prevention”. Furthermore, it is likely he has an overriding endocrine abnormality leading to accelerated bone loss and no lifestyle interventions would’ve helped.
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u/mt_dewsky 2d ago
What are you, a Dr or something?
Thank you for taking the time to write this all out. I appreciate learning new things.
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u/megxx299 2d ago
Just help him carry it though.
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u/Sufficient_Prompt888 2d ago
Seriously... I was more impressed with grandpa managing to carry and place that thing than with the craftsmanship.
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u/CantaloupeCamper 2d ago
I assume the jig used to shape the wood was at least partially built using the previous railing or on site right there. Then off to the shop.
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u/Time-Permission-1930 2d ago
Or this might be the old one, just re-finished
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u/ZiltoidTheHorror 2d ago
True... so how did they make the old one?
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u/DamnableNook 2d ago
They refinished an even older one, duh.
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u/relator_fabula 2d ago
This is the ancient one, the oldest stair that has been here since the beginning. Its origin is an enigma, but still today we refinish its handrail, generation after generation. We must refinish. The ancient one must live on.
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u/SinisterCheese 2d ago
I work for a machine shop that makes lot of the metal parts of the railing.
The wood top hand rails carpenters have adjustable jig, that they can set the elevation, distance, division and curve to. Then after it is approximately (Like within few mm) they adjust it with insanely sharp chisels on-location. And the metal frame itself is quite wobbly without the wood on top, allowing you to actually adjust it like 3-5 mm easy by leaning on it a bit (if it is a design intended for wood hand rail).
It is more likely that the wooden rail fits without an issue, than it is for the metal rail to fit in to a new construction, if done according to drawings as prefab. This is because the tolerance for concrete are absolute mess.
The only people who can be trusted to make walls correctly are masons. Basic bricklayers get it to few mm, which good enough. But a mason gets it absolutely fucking correct. Meaning that then the metal and wood will always go in correct on first try.
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u/mlm161820 2d ago
I appreciate the craftsmanship but hate to see a gentleman of that age still working for a living. Hopefully he’s doing it because he wants to and not because he needs to.
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u/cheerywino 2d ago
Where do the stairs even lead?
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u/cyclops8008 2d ago
It looks like it ends in a solid wall! I don’t understand and I’ve watched the ending so closely.
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u/Dresline 2d ago
I had to scroll farther than I thought to find this. You're asking the real question.
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u/conte360 2d ago
Fun fact when you become a carpentry master you automatically get plaid/checkerboard shirts.
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u/BurazSC2 2d ago
If you are capable of creating wooden puppets that come to life, some railings would be pretty easy, though.
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u/NoInitiative4821 2d ago
Dang, man, that is amazing. He's like an old craftsman from a children's book or something.
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u/NipahKing 2d ago
Young people, learn from these older guys while you still can! THESE skills are how you stay employed forever.
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u/OutsideWishbone7 2d ago
Did he take the old one off, sand it down and put it back?…. Cheeky old man
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u/fgwr4453 2d ago
It would be less impressive if he gets his wood from Home Depot. He probably found a board that was already shaped like that while there. /s
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u/JonasRahbek 2d ago
Plot twist:
They had this piece of wood lying around, and they build the staircase to fit it..
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u/Groundbreaking-Fig38 2d ago
Measure 85,639 times. Cut once.