Back to the Porch Railing Project

I'm fired up to get my porch railing built and installed.  

Many years ago, perhaps 4 or 5 years by now, I took out the old railing.  I painted the front porch and took off the railings and found they were too rotten to put back up.  I decided to make new, but my projects take forever to finish.

On my computer, one of my screensaver pictures is a landscape picture of our house back when it had the porch railing, and I really miss it.  So, I'm doubling up my efforts to get this project finished.  I'm now on my final push to get it all done and put together.  Here are a few pictures of my recent progress.  

I am making square pocket holes for my columns to fit into.

These pockets are about 1.8 inches square 

with 0.25 inch radius corners.

I made a little template out of a scrap piece of maple flooring.

I clamp that template to my railing - hopefully in the right location.

Here's a closeup.  You can see my pencil centerline.  It looks like my pocket will cut into a knot in my ceder railing.

Here's my tool:  A little palm router.  I've used this for a ton of projects, including rounding over all the edges of my railings and columns.  I now have a pattern bit installed - it is simply a 0.5 inch diameter router bit with a bearing on top.  That bearing follows my hardwood template.

Here I completed cutting out the pocket.

The template is still clamped down.

Here is the finished pocket without my template.  It makes a perfect smooth edge.  It zips right through those tough knots.

And here is the finished product.  My column fits real nicely.

My railing has a total of 57 columns.  I am currently about 80% done with this pocket making chore, and then I can move on to priming, assembling, and painting.

Post Script:  Daughter and I just did the math to figure how many linear feet of rounded over edges I traversed with my palm router.  We calculated that I travelled 690 feet with my 1/4" round-over router bit for this project.  Wow!