Floating Staircase for Bronx Residence
Mill finish steel and white oak staircase installed
We were asked to make a floating staircase for a client’s residence, designed with the intention of embracing the raw material finish and letting the bold angular design speak for itself. We knew that for this project, it would be all about accuracy and consistency in our spacing and angles, so we began by a full scale vector file using accurate material dimensions. From there we made a jig on our CNC router for our tread supports to make sure we had everything exactly right for the first stage of the fabrication process.
CNC cut jig to align the tread supports
Doing this ended up saving us quite a lot of time laying out the tread supports and significantly sped up the fabrication process of the stringers which we used as the bases to build our railings.
Welding on the tread supports
The railings also needed to be fabricated with accurate spacing and angles. We ended up using jigs to keep everything consistent, and built them vertically in our shop so we could periodically make sure it stayed plumb over the whole length. To simplify transportation and installation we decided to make the railing and stringers separately, so we drilled and tapped the top flange of each C-channel and used countersunk bolts to make the connection in a black oxide finish.
Stringer and railing bolted together with floor connection angle clamped in place
Railing and stringer bolted together staged in our shop
Once we had all the steelwork welded and deburred, we wanted to mock everything up in our shop to triple check all our critical dimensions and do a dry run of installation. We are fortunate to have a 15’ ceiling height in our shop and a mezzanine to bolt on to.
Stringers and railings mocked up in our shop
Finally we turned our attention to the treads, putting a slight chamfer on the edges and a satin clear coat. These turned out really nice. We also applied two coats of boiled linseed oil to the mill finish steel to give it a durable finish that won’t crack and chip over time.
White oak treads with satin clear coat
Installing the stringers on site