Super cheap DIY Cable Railing

okay so I've been planning putting in a cable railing system for our deck for a while and as I looked at what was out there what I found is that it's overwhelmingly expensive especially more than anything when you get into the different types of fittings that there that are offered for the end I've looked at a few different things I've looked at some of the more finished systems which I love the look of but they're ridiculously expensive I mean three four or five hundred dollars by the time you're done you take this one for example and this is literally forty forty-one dollars for a set to do one cable and you're looking typically running ten to twelve cables for a railing I mean the end result looks really good but again really expensive I also watched a video online where somebody did this in a couple problems with this one it's still not that inexpensive when you start looking at these lag like lag eyebolts as well as the turnbuckles it gets pretty expensive some of these eyebolts alone were two to three dollars apiece and by the time you put this all together one I don't necessarily love the look of it and two is really not that inexpensive I did run across this one on Amazon which as far as finished systems go I think actually looks pretty sharp in hindsight I really didn't see this one till after I got my project done and this one would have sparked my interest I don't totally love the look of it but it's not bad I think it is pretty sharp and pretty inexpensive although honestly by the time I was done it's still more expensive than the solution I kind of came up with basically materials I bought for it those are the carriage bolts 3/8 by 8 inch I needed them a little bit longer just because I'll think my posts are and and then some 3/8 stainless steel washers 3/8 stainless steel nuts and then you can see the what's left I've got one more to put in so I really just have one extra and then I actually had a couple that I ruined one I didn't get straight in on it and blew it out the side and the other one I broke off a drill inside of that one so not a perfect system but it was it was just way less expensive I think it was about maybe seven bucks for each one of these so and actually no this was about five bucks I think for the washers well seven dollars for the bolts there's four in a package and then these I accidentally bought a bigger bag I realized they had smaller bags of these so I have way too many of these but they're you know same thing I think it was like six to seven dollars for the for the box or the bag amount so it was it was super inexpensive building get this is the first step so the next thing we're gonna do is just take a little off of kind of that leftover verb I'm just kind of camper a little bit and smooth it off get it ready to drill it out [Music] okay the last step we're gonna do is just drill the eighth inch hole that's going down the center so I've got all of these done and chamfered and now I just got to drill the hole through all right so just gonna drop it in the vise I am I'm only going to be using the end part of the threads so if I damage some threads up here that's not a big deal alright I've got my cutting oil which I'm gonna get started with that I'm gonna kind of give it a sinner and I have marked with a marker just how far in I want to go [Music] all right and then really quick I'm just gonna chant for that whole just to make it a little easier for the cable to slide in there and then that one is ready to go on the end of a cable okay so from this point it gets pretty simple we've got these all made I actually made the mistake of drilling these out at eighth inch which with an eighth inch cable meant you just could not jam that cable in here so I had to redo a few of them and then finish the rest of them in 9/64 which opened it up big enough works smooth and now just basically tapping these in to get them started and then from here we're gonna pop the cable in okay so you can see now 9/64 these slide in pretty smooth so it's ready to go and then here's what I did on the crimping tool so this is pretty I was having a hard time finding something that would crimp the stainless steel so what I did is I bought this is Harbor Freight for 21 bucks so it's it's a 36 inch bolt cutter and what I did is I took a die grinder and I just put about a quarter inch hole in it so with a three-eighths that gives me just enough crimp that it bites down pretty good so now I'm just gonna take that and starting pretty close to the end just pop one crimp on there and then back it up just a little bit and do a second just throw a pair of pliers on here I've been taking them down just about just about past the threads then that leaves me about you know quarter half-inch if I've got to tighten these up I've tightened up a couple at the top and I stopped just because I know you're supposed to kind of get them all in first before you start tightening because then you know as you tighten this one this will start to loosen so you kind of got to work it on its way down and then we'll just throw nothing - washer on the back this side will be done all right so pretty simple just gonna take this down to maybe about a quarter inch from the end I watching another youtuber I they mentioned picking one of these up totally worth it trying to get through these cables with anything else is a nightmare so this makes a pretty pretty easy cut and you notice that you get a really clean end that goes right in here with no issues and then I'm just gonna crimp that one down alright so you can see it's a it's actually pretty smooth I'm not quite done I've got one more cable to put in on I haven't really tighten them all up yet but it's it came out pretty smooth I've got a zip off the backs of the bolts so those are so those are clean and even and I figured what I'd do is this is slide that tends to get a little more traffic so I'm gonna probably take some time and line those up nice and straight and then I'll use the other side to kind of just balance out the tension so you can see I got one more cable to do and these are is this an older deck and the the poles are not super straight so I did my best to make the cables look clean but the the end product was pretty good and I got a I think I've have to come up with a total for everything I've spent but even buying that tool to do the crimping it had worked pretty smooth

Channel: Fred Rose

Views: 96,083

Rating: 4.8271604 out of 5

Keywords: DIY Cable railing low cost, cheap cable railings, DIY easy cable railing, budget cable railings, deck railings

Id: 5aN2K_B6Eko

Length: 8min 52sec (532 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 10 2019