Hi Dan, A hole right through is called a through mortise and a hole that ends is a blind mortise.
What you do with the lower rail that has a slot in it is to fill the slot with spacers between the balusters. These can be shaped to add interest, stand proud or be flush. You could make the mortises as you describe, boring them out with a forstner bit and usually squaring them off with a good sharp chisel or a router and jig depending on the depth. You can get bits an inch and a half or more long but you would need to plunge out the holes in stages. You might then square them up by hand or round off the corners of the mating tenens. One suggestion I will make is not to bother with dados and notches but to fix your 2 by 4 and 2 by 6 to the outer aspect of the vertical 4 by 4 and a 2 by 6 top rail which will cover the top of the 4 by 4 and the edge of the 2 by 6 apron then screw or nail 2 by 2 pilasters to the inside of the apron and lower 2 by 4. If you like you could add a second 2 by 4 to the inside of the lower ends of the pilasters to hide their ends, you could do that at the top as well I suppose or even some one inch stock. With that fancy nailer you could almost pin it all together that way. Just make yourself a fancy spacing block to keep the pilasters even. If you want to be moderately fancy then two pieced of one inch stock to sandwich the tops and bottoms of the pilasters, assemble the spans then let them into the opposing edges of your 4 by 4 vertical posts. You could buy inch dowel or something similar and set them into round mortises between the 2 by stock. The biggest trouble with any mortising in such a situation is replacing any pilasters which become broken or otherwise damaged. Hope some of these suggestions give you a few more ideas or at least alternatives. By the way, you may prefer to set your railing posts on the outside of the rim just to impose less on your deck surface. Just be sure there is enough deck that a foot won't slide under the rail and over the edge. Dale Leavens, Cochrane Ontario Canada [EMAIL PROTECTED] Skype DaleLeavens Come and meet Aurora, Nakita and Nanook at our polar bear habitat. ----- Original Message ----- From: Dan Rossi To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2007 12:46 PM Subject: [BlindHandyMan] Deck railing design. OK, I am kicking around ideas for railings for my deck. Let's start with the premise that I will use 4X4 posts that will be notched. Thus there will be a 9.5 inch long tung of the notch running down the inside of the rim joist and the mouth of the notch will be sitting on the edge of the rim joist. Does that make sense? Now, one of the simpler designs would be to notch the upper end of the post to accept a 2X6 on edge. Then simply attach balasters from the 2X6 down to the rim joist. This is simple, strong, and pretty standard. I've seen a number of decks with this kind of railing. At the other end of the spectrum is what I had originally pictured in my head, until I tried to figure out how to manufacture it myself. Imagine that there is a 2X4 lower rail sitting in dados set into the 4X4 posts. The lower rail would be 3 inches above the decking. There would be a 2X4 upper rail set into rabbits at the top of the 4X4 posts. There would be a 2X6 cap running on top of that, giving a wide smooth connection between everything. Sounds nice and straight forward until you try and tie the upper and lower rails together with balisters. I assume you have to cut mortises in the lower rail in the shape of the balisters. Is this a blind mortise or not a mortise at all since it shouldn't pass through the 2X4. The upper rail would be the same thing although the mortise, or squarish hole, could pass through the 2X4 if necessary since there will be a 2X6 cap to cover that. so, if I actually am talking about a blind mortise, how do I cut one that would be in the same shape as the end of the balister? I saw something in the store that looked similar to what I wanted. It was a 2X4 with squarish blind mortises cut into it. However, the top edge was already nicely beveled so it would be the top rail/cap. You wouldn't put a 2X6 cap on top of it. Next to those, I saw what looked like a bottom rail since the edges weren't nicely beveled. What I didn't like though, was instead of square blind holes, in the 2X4, it had blind slots, IE, you could slide the bottom of the balister into position. I don't like it because it then leaves a little cut-out opening where the balister slides into place that is visible. So, the big questions are: Is a squarish hole that doesn't go all the way through a piece of lumber called a mortise? A blind Mortise? Or just a squarish hole that doesn't go through? How impossible is it to cut one of these? What new tool do I need to be able to do it? I can imagine one labor intensive way to do it would be to use a Forsner bit to drill a blind hole and then square off the hole using my router and a jig. Any ideas? Or should I just go with the initial basic design? -- Blue skies. Dan Rossi Carnegie Mellon University. E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (412) 268-9081 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
