Project Wood Working

a half oval balcony

well, sam had another second floor balcony project recently ... heres the first one ... there was some head scratching and a little rework, but in the end, it looks great and the clients are pleased ... ever since i was a carpenter in the 70s i have struggled with the oval shape ... its been a lot easier since the advent of cad drawing and cnc cutting, but ovals are never easy ... its just a difficult shape to do gracefully. so, try it in steel ... see how it goes .... click the photos to enlarge them ..
sam is lucky to have both the cad program and the cnc, which easily cut his main templates for the shape of the platform .... a little rolling, some torch work, and a fair amount of hammering and he had the platform shape under control ..
he then added the expanded steel floor by welding from the bottom.
then came the hard part ... forming the top and bottom rails from flat stock by cutting almost through every inch or so with the bandsaw, and then heating and bending it to shape ...
this picture is from an earlier post, linked above, and shows the cuts after the bending, but before the fill welding .... the fill welding on these 6 top and bottom plates added a new challenge ... as the cracks are welded, the piece grows, which isnt surprising when you discover it ... as you weld, you heat the metal; it expands; and you fill in the cracks and it stays at the larger size ... duh ... so a little cutting and rejoining in the flatter parts of the ovals and he was back in business...
then all you have to do is align the 3/8ths spindles so that they are square, plumb, parallel and in the right plane with the walls of the house. again with the cnc for the jigs, some judicious eyeballing and he was good to go ... to keep the frames square as the spindles were welded, sam added 1.5" verticals which were later cut off to form the clapboard angled mounting tabs you seen in the top photo ... it all required a test fit or two on site and some minor adjustments ...
he then fabricated the 5/8ths round stock detail, which was taken from the base of the clients desk which is in the room behind the balcony ... i think he made that in about 4 separate pieces that he then curved around the main railing and welded into place ...
it was all graceful and smooth in the end ... gold star for sam ... not an easy project and he came in right exactly on budget ...