Chippendale railing

[Jamie Buxton]

A contractor friend asked me if I could build Chippendale railings. I'd never heard of Chippendale railings, but Google turns up plenty of images. Here's a couple of examples I pulled off the web.

Chippendale1.jpg chippendale2.jpg

There are quite a few patterns for these railings, but they all involve lots of diagonal elements, and lots of joinery. To complicate this particular job, the post positions were established by the existing building, so the post-to-post dimensions were all different. This meant that I needed a pattern which I could adjust to any width without it looking stupid. Here's the pattern I chose. My width adjustment is simple truncation. Also notice that the central joints meet at 90 degrees, which makes joinery easier.

singlepanel.jpg

To build the panels, I made an assembly jig. In the pic below you can see the jig, with white panel parts loaded in it. The jig is a sheet of OSB with lots of blocks screwed into it to position the parts. The joints you see here are all loose-tenon, done with a Domino.

glued.jpg

Here's a pic of the 90 degree joints in glue-up. I used West Systems epoxy, thickened a bit with sanding dust. Notice that all the panel parts run long.

clamped.jpg

Here I'm trimming the panel edges with a track saw.

trimming.jpg

The next step, which I don't have a photo of, was to surround the panel with a frame, and screw through the frame into the end of each stick in the panel. I used more epoxy, and I plugged the screw heads in prep for paint. I made nine panels, all of them different widths. In all, there were 200 tenon joints and 300 screw joints, and it took me two weeks.

Here's a pic of one part of the completed project. I think it looks pretty cool.

overall.jpg

[Bruce Page]

Pretty cool indeed! I bet the homeowner is thrilled with it.
The Domino must've been worth its weight in gold for a project like this.

[Mel Fulks]

A well done beautiful ornament to the house. That is the pattern most associated with Chippendale ,it's origin is Chinese and there is a Dover reprint full of other Chinese lattices.

[Jamie Buxton]

..The Domino must've been worth its weight in gold for a project like this...

In general I'm not as big on the Domino as other people are, but on this job, it really was invaluable. Trying to make all those M&T joints in my usual way just would have taken too much time.

[Mike Null]

I've only seen one or two of those. Your work is outstanding. thanks for posting.

[John TenEyck]

That looks great Jamie. Thanks for showing how you did it. I'm sure the HO is thrilled.

John

[Jay Aubuchon]

Thanks for the detailed description and illustration of your method!

[Andrew Hughes]

Nice work Jamie.I never heard of Chippendale railing.Thanks for Sharing

[Frederick Skelly]

"Pretty good"? Dear God, that fence looks GREAT! I've never seen anything like it. Was the homeowner thrilled?

[Christopher Charles]

What an unusual project! Very interesting and beautifully done.

[Mel Fulks]

Good example of regional differences here. The railing is pretty common in the east coast states where much of the architecture is influenced by old surviving designs maintained by colleges and municipalities. Around here every neighborhood probably has some Chinese Chippendale railings. They are even done in unpainted pressure treated two by fours...for the "strong...like bull!!" look. Looks like Jamie has done a top line fabrication which will establish a tradition on the left coast.

[Michelle Rich]

thanks for sharing this..a wonderful job, and thanks for sharing the jig idea..I bet the customer was thrilled..I would have been.