Finishing Touches

Wood Railings, Handrails and Handrail Fittings

Wood railings - Index showing wood handrail profiles and handrail parts

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Wood railing can invoke a sense of grandeur from a by gone era or convey inspired contemporary design. More then just a safety barrier wood railings are an integral part of the design statement for both the interior and exterior setting making a wood railing system an elegant edition to any home or office.

Handrails, hand railings or railings are general terms referring to the wood railing system as a whole. This section of the site deals with the handrail meaning the portion of the wood railing system that one actually grasps. Our handrail section is devoted to showing just the handrail profiles and dimension that we offer. It should be noted that each profile comes with a set of wood handrail fittings which are not shown such as quarter turns, goosenecks, volutes, easements, ramps, offset caps, straight caps and scrolls. These are sometimes referred to as stair parts or railin parts and depending on your railing layout, you may use some, all or none of them.  Railing parts as we call them are generally used at transition points in a railing system, at the start and ends of railings for either necessity or for style. 

You can go to the wood hand rail profile index now or continue reading to see how railing parts are used in railing systems.

To give a general idea of how things go together in a wood hand railing system, here is how the railing parts list might sound in order for a staircase that has 2 sets of stairs and 1 landing between them where the second set of stairs leads off the landing at 90 degrees and where the railings have been designed to be continuous with no interruption to the hand grip.

Starting from the bottom of the first set of stairs, you would have a volute, then an easement followed by a straight run of railing the length of that first stair. You are now approaching the top of the first set of stairs and you are about to make a transition from the stair to the landing. This is where a gooseneck would come in then a quarter turn followed by an easement. This will have adjusted your railing height  to include the landing and turned your railing 90 degrees which would put you inline to attach the next straight run of wood railing to the easement and bring you to the end of the second stair. You are now at the top of the second stair and you must transition from the stair to the second floor landing railing. You would use the gooseneck, easement, quarter turn combination again to cover the height and distance and to turn your railing once more 90 degrees to put it inline to close off the stair opening on the second floor. .  That describes a  basic scenario of  a set of wood railings designed for a continuous  hand railing system and the railing parts from wood that make it happen.