A Simplified Guide to Custom Stairbuilding and Tangent Handrailing

A very informative book for the carpenter who is already very comfortable with finish work.

Great diagrams and clear instructions.

This is a really great book step by step instructions to the tangent handrail method. Has really helped demystify tangent handrails for this guy.

I bought this book because my girlfriend wanted to construct a staircase in the old house she was converting from a barn and I needed to renovate a staircase in my old house.This calls itself "a simplified guide" to custom stairbuilding and tangent handrailing. Be warned that it is packed with pages and pages of abstruse geometric diagrams and theory. It is intended for a professional who needs to be able to build curved staircases. However, I rather suspect that, today, even a professional stairbuilder would use a computer program for designing staircases, rather than work out all the dimensions, curves and angles from geometric principles.This is most certainly not a book for the amateur carpenter who wants to build one or two staircases. Nor, I believe, is it a book for an ordinary professional carpenter who needs to build custom staircases.And my girlfriend's staircase? In the end, she commissisoned a local woodworker to build her staircase. He measured up, took notes of what was wanted and went away to use his PC to make the design. A week later, he came back and assembled the staircase whose parts he had cut according to the computer's output. It is a beautifully staircase turning through 270 degrees and it fits exactly. I wish I had not bought this book - its contents were not even useful to us as background reading.

My husband has been in the carpentry trade for over forty-five years and spiral stairs has been one of his specialities. He reviewed the book and has found several items of real interest after all these years to assist him in the building of stairs.