Stringer Layout with a Story Pole & a Calculator!

now that we've laid out the story pole we can start laying out the stringer template [Music] like using a template when I'm doing stringers a lot of times when you're doing a stair especially with PVC decking or something you ended up with your stringers on 10 inch centers or something you could have 6 8 10 stringers you got a layout and if you use one of the stringers a piece of inch-and-a-half stock for your template Wow it's kind of tough to get a straight line on every single rise and run whereas if you use a piece of one buy you can have really nice clean sharp edges I know a lot of finished guys will rip supply wood and use that as templates and I'm just using a piece of Windsor one here because this whiteboard a really contrast with the pencil lines we'll be using so here's my framing squared and yep I'm gonna be using a framing square for this and a framing square is really nothing more than a gauge block right but I'm not going to use it as a gauge block I'm just gonna use it as a pattern I'm going to use a calculator to locate the position of every single riser but first I have to adjust my stair gauges or whatever system I'm using you might be wanting to put a piece of 1 by 2 or 1 by 4 across your framing square and clamp it to the square like a lot of guys do so you can just slide it along but regardless of what you use you've got to layout your framing square precisely and it's the same method take your framing square and set it so it's exactly 10 inches on the blade to the very top edge of your template and then on the tongue set it up for your eyes this is 6 and 13 16 so I'm just gonna set this right there be careful because on some framing squares like this one these increments are in tenths of an inch whereas over here these are sixteenths the rest of the whole square sixteenths except this one edge of the tongue whereas this square from Martinez Tool Company its sixteenths on all edges so look at your framing score carefully before you start relying on it and the other different series I'm using this framing square for this presentation because it's so visible you can see the numbers clearly the Martinez one doesn't show up on the camera so well that boy I sure like this the cam locks on the on the gauges on on the gauge locks are so cool and this is made out of titanium this will last your lifetime and the lifetime of your kids and your grandkids too it's an awesome tool so how do we start we've got our stair gauges set up I'm gonna pull my little clamps off of here I'm gonna take my square and I'm gonna set it right here and I'm gonna make a mark for my first riser this is the bottom this is our first riser coming up from the bottom of this stringer and now I'm gonna move this and just remember I was using the outside of the tongue to make this long line because I wanted to extend it for the rest of these I'm gonna use the inside of the blade in the tongue but I can't use that yet because I don't want to use a gauge block to lay these out I want to use my calculator because if I use my calculator I can avoid cumulative air I've already proven to you that if you use a gauge block to lay out your stringers and step off if you're single one of these locations for their next riser you're gonna end up with cumulative air a way to avoid it is with your calculator let's look at this again this is the same game that I played with the story pole we're gonna be using the dimensions off of a right angle you know that a squared plus B squared equals C squared thing but the calculator is actually going to be able to do this with inches and you're not gonna have to say a squared B squared we're gonna use rise and run we already know the rise look let's start from scratch I'm gonna throw the calculator but my numbers still in the memory so I can go recall memory plus to get my total overall finish to finish rise its forty seven and seven eighths I'm gonna divide that by seven and that's gonna tell me that I've got a six and 13 inch rise that's the riser so I'll push rise and it'll enter that number in the count later now I want to enter the run that's the other leg of the right angle so I'm gonna take a ten inch run now the calculator is all set up to calculate the diagonal which is the hypotenuse so I'll hit the diagonal button and the diagonal measurement is 12 and 1/8 and we're gonna step this off using the calculator to avoid cumulative error just like we did with the story pole I'll take my speed square and I'll clamp it down here so we have something to hook my tape measure to right there and I can pull that 12 and 1/8 inch measurement right here now let's get the next one I'll take the calculator and go plus equals 24 and a quarter that's the second one so I'll hook my tape in the same location 24 and a quarter right there and then I'm gonna do the same thing but I'm not going to press the plus key again if I did it would start adding 24 and a quarter to itself and I don't want that to I wanted to add the die at the original diagonal to itself so I'll just push the equals button 36 and 3/8 same thing 36 and 3/8 the next one I'll push the equals button again and it's 48 and 7/16 48 and 7/16 right there then we got another one 60 and 9/16 all right here and one more push the equals button one more time seventy-two and eleven sixteenths there we go 72 and 11 16 right there now I can use my framing square there's a pattern to layout of both the riser and the tread I just have to set my framing square right on this mark I can put my pencil on it I'm not going to split the difference I'm not going to slide my square back-and-forth to try and hit this mark - I want to maintain the same diagonal measurement all the way up my template so I'm gonna set it right there and then make my mark and sometimes that intersection might be off maybe a sixteenth of an inch that is the way we're going to avoid cumulative error we're going to keep each one of these the same by marking to the diagonal measurement right there and this one too and the last one there now we've got all of the treads and risers laid out and we can start detailing the bottom and the top of this template detailing the bottom is really easy we don't even have to do any arithmetic we don't have to visualize anything because we have a two dimensional full-scale drawing of the stair on the story pole remember on the story pole we've got the top of the decking here's the decking right here we've got the top of the rough cut we've got the top of the brick and we've got the concrete the very bottom of the story pole is the concrete that the stringers are going to sit on so all I have to do is take the story pole and line it up with the rough cut on the tread and mark the bottom of it right there then I'll take my framing square and I'll extend that line right across here and actually I've got a piece of aluminum here that'll make this easier you won't have this on your job site but it makes it easier for me during a presentation to get the bottom cut on that stringer nice and long because this is what's going to sit on the concrete and then additionally on the concrete I like to install a two by pressure-treated cleat that way I can notch the bottom of the stringers and they'll never slip they'll key into that cleat the cleat can be bolted down to the concrete and it's good for ever do that I'm gonna use the framing square to lay out for the cleat I'll just slide it to three and a half inches and Mark the back of it and then I'll bring the framing square forward and I'll flush it up with the bottom of the line and make a mark at an inch and a half and continue that line right there so this area right here is going to get notched out for the to by cleat and that is all the detailing we have to do to the bottom and notice how funny of this looks you can see that this riser is much higher than the rest of them that's because that bricks going to come up into here but we've accommodated the brick that's the important thing there won't be any riser down here at the bottom that's only four inches tall because we got two and a half inches of brick now let's go detail the top okay now we're gonna detail the top of the template and look close this is what we're gonna want to achieve we want that stringer to come all the way back to the back and the newel post first of all the rim joist is five and a half inches it's a two by six think you're not gonna have that on your job that's this set you're gonna have a two by 12 or something for a rim joist two by eight who knows but it's five and a half inches and we've got the three and a half plus the one and a half two by legendre hanger whatever you want to call it and so we got a notch for all of that to get this notch flush to the rim joist and to get this notch here to kiss up tight against the bottom of the rim joist and that's really important because if all of your stringers have this precise notch in it to install these so that all of your treads are exactly the same elevation and perfectly level all the way across all you have to do is take your trip your stringers and lift them up until that knotch kisses up against the bottom of your joists and you're good to go so let's get our head together here remember this is the last tread and this is the last riser which is actually the rim joist here's your last tread and here's your last riser which is the rim joist so we're gonna measure down from the top of the rim joist I'll use my square to do this five and a half inches just put my square right at that point and make a mark right there that's where the knotch begins I can take my square and slide this across or let me just put a line right there that's what the knotch begins so now I'm going to slide my square back to five inches remember we've got a to buy ledger and a three and a half inch new a post so I'm going to set the square at five inches and make a mark right here and that is the back of the newel post so I'll take my aluminum bar again so I can get us a nice straight line here so now all I have to do is take my square and line it up on this line and there we go and this right here is the knotch this is where we're gonna kiss up against the bottom of the rim joist and this is going to flush out to the face of the rim joist here is our finished template and you'll notice I cut every single one of these out with a circular saw no jigsaw I went right past the interception on every one of these treads and risers so I could get a perfectly straight line that's another advantage to using a template if you're using an actual stringer as a template you'd have to stop and switch to a jigsaw and then you start tracing a line with a pencil from that template to the next one and wow you get off all over the place here's how this fits you kiss it up against the bottom of the rim joist you flush it out with the face of the rim joist and every one of your treads and risers are perfect no cumulative air you

Channel: THISisCarpentry

Views: 174,036

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Id: P9t7pnk5Uy8

Length: 13min 46sec (826 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 03 2019