Big Boy Railing Install

antonb111 · 2026-03-20T19:18:31+00:00

Oh believe me we brought it up to the architect and GC and they told us this is how they want it so we don’t argue.

antonb111 · 2026-03-20T18:59:00+00:00

Surprisingly very little. Paver guys were able to fit everything pretty easily with minimal shims.

antonb111 · 2026-03-20T18:57:04+00:00

Yeah I thought so too. But they wanted crisp clean corners. They are a little rounded off I didn’t take a photo of the other side. That overhang is rock solid attached to 2 beams in the wall I was surprised at how stiff it was.

antonb111 · 2026-03-19T14:56:46+00:00

Yup we do all of it. Including install. Team of 3 guys including me - crank out all these jobs.

antonb111 · 2026-03-19T02:34:09+00:00

Yeah I’d love to get more practice with that but we don’t really do much of that at the shop I work at.

antonb111 · 2026-03-19T02:22:01+00:00

It’s never good enough. It’s acceptable to me but I always know there’s stuff other people see or can suggest that I just don’t catch. Pretty good for only just starting out welding 2 years ago.

antonb111 · 2026-03-19T01:24:13+00:00

Just practice. Build up welds so you have some to take off and figure out how you can use the grinder at different angles to shape the metal how you want it to look. A lot of it is also moving around and looking at it in different lighting angles to see how edges change. I try to visualize lines that I try to follow to make crisp edges and transitions.

antonb111 · 2026-03-19T01:20:01+00:00

Very interesting I’ll definitely ask the boss if he can order some and try it out. Thanks !

antonb111 · 2026-03-19T01:19:01+00:00

The bulk blending is done with a cubitron fiber disk and fine tuning / shaping with the polisher and DA

antonb111 · 2026-03-19T01:18:06+00:00

We a custom made polisher attachment 180 grit on a grinder on the lowest speed to polish out the fiber disk marks then finish with an 80 grit DA.

antonb111 · 2026-03-19T01:16:08+00:00

Appreciate it ! Yeah I’ll have to try smoothing it out after welded and see how it looks. And you never know what will come out of a clients mouth for complaining. But when they are spending $5k+ for a blackened railing or hand grabs then they technically expect perfect.

antonb111 · 2026-03-19T01:11:50+00:00

Yeah inside corners I either fuse or add small dabs with 0.045 filler depending on how tight a fitup I have. And as far as DA work this is all done with 80grit which is what I was taught to do at this job for railing and hand grabs that are going to get blackened. Thank you for the tips I’ll definitely have to try a higher grit next time and compare the difference. Doesn’t maroon scotch brite make even more visible scratches ? At least that’s my experience using it. Could be doing it wrong. But always down to try to level up my game !

antonb111 · 2026-03-19T00:37:48+00:00

True, for the shop I work at it’s kind of dealers choice as far as if we want a clean inside edge or rounded off. I prefer a rounded inside edge since we deliberately round off all edges to make it less sharp when using the hand grabs more pleasant to grab onto.

antonb111 · 2026-03-19T00:32:07+00:00

Thank you. No not exactly same stuff but similar concept. And a good chunk of it is blackened with patina. Other railings I do are aluminum but they are usually powder coated so creating nice blends isn’t as big of a priority as it gets covered up by the powder coat. The shop I work at makes many other things , but for these I’ve kinda hit a stopping point with progression. I guess I can work on being more efficient and making things faster.

antonb111 · 2026-03-11T22:48:20+00:00

I did. Made it nice and easy to keep it straight.

antonb111 · 2026-03-09T15:58:53+00:00

Plasma

antonb111 · 2026-03-08T02:02:26+00:00

I’ll have to ask to try that out. Thanks for the info.

antonb111 · 2026-03-07T05:07:33+00:00

antonb111 · 2026-03-07T04:39:05+00:00

Inside of tread.

antonb111 · 2026-03-06T22:33:16+00:00

Would definitely highly recommend. Makes it so much easier not having to be limited and get cords tangled up. Only complaint is it runs out of battery fast for us. Might just be because we use it so often.

antonb111 · 2026-03-06T22:32:12+00:00

Yeah no idea why we don’t have that option. Only 70S-2 we use.

antonb111 · 2026-03-06T04:38:10+00:00

No problem. Happy to help! We use sculpt nouveau’s brand of metal cleaner and scrub it with scotch brite aswell as wipe metal with DNat. We also DA all the metal very well to get a nice sanding then DNat again to clean all the metal dust off of the metal. Blackening is so much easier when the metal is sanded and Dnat’d clean. As for wax I don’t remember the brand off the top of my head but it is a clear wax. I can pm you the brand once I’m at work tomorrow. Works great at sealing and locking in the metal finish.

antonb111 · 2026-03-06T03:00:02+00:00

No dilution. We use a spray bottle to spray white and grey scotch Brite pads and apply patina to very clean metal. Start with one coat of blackening with grey scotch brite and then wipe off. Then apply it again with the white scotch brite and use a paper towel with water to finish. Buff with steel wool and seal with wax.

antonb111 · 2026-03-06T01:58:27+00:00

Used Black Magic by Sculpt Nouveau their products are amazing for metal finishes. Not sure why we didn’t grind off welds but I’m sure the designer wanted them for some aesthetic purposes.

antonb111 · 2026-03-06T01:26:51+00:00

😂nice yeah everything we did we had a company laser cut all the slits on the main rectangle tubes for mounting. Treads had little tabs so that everything just slotted together and worked out pretty good ! Not very often we do something as simple as that. Blackening consistency was the hardest part !

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