Pike & Daughter

← Back to the book

Entry XIV · Tuesday

A staircase for Gaddesden

I have been asked how we make a stair that does not creak. The honest answer is that we make it twice: once on paper, and once in the workshop with the treads dry-fitted before a drop of glue goes near them.

The flight at Gaddesden has sixteen risers and rises 2.64 metres. We started with a rod, a long pine stick marked with every riser and every tread, and carried it up and down the old stair until it agreed with the house.

A rod never lies. A drawing sometimes does.

The stringers are cut from a single oak board, so the grain climbs with the flight. Each tread is let into a housing, a groove cut with a router plane to the depth of a shilling, and held from below with a pair of wedges. Tap them home, glue the wedges, and the tread cannot move.

3

Plate I

A bespoke oak staircase with square balusters in a bright cottage hallway

Plate I. The flight after the second coat of hard-wax oil.

4

The sums

  1. 2,640 mm

    Sixteen risers of 165 mm. Every one measured, none rounded.

  2. 250 mm

    Fifteen treads, each with a bullnose edge worked by hand.

  3. English oak

    Air-dried for three years, planed to 32 mm for treads and 44 mm for stringers.

  4. Five weeks

    Two in drawings and timber, three in the workshop. Fitted in a day.

5

Plate II

The workshop in morning light with oak boards and hung tools

Plate II. Where it was made. The boards on the left were the stringers, still in the stick.

Rosie from next door brought biscuits and an opinion about the handrail. She was right about the handrail.

B. Pike

6

Turn to the last page and write to us →