Brass on handrail questions

Date 09-26-2010 13:23 Edited 09-26-2010 13:32

Got a guy wanting brass hanrail out in front of his house. He only wants one railing but been checking around and tubing is thin. I've been tossing around an idea and thought I'd run it across ya'll to see if anybody has done something like this.

I'm thinking about doing a standard handrail, 1-1/2" newel posts, 1-1/2" x 1/2" channel for top and bottom with 1/2" solid square balusters. Sounds plain and humdrum, here's the kicker. I'm considering a polished brass caprail, lambs tongues and brass collars on the balusters. Now welding the brass, on the caprails and lambs tongues where they meet, then brazing the caprail to the steel along with the brass collars to the 1/2" balusters. Is this feasible? Need an education from some more experienced folks. I figured a black or white powder coat, but going out today to check out the site and see. He's told me there is a bush there so that's why they wanted the brass, so it would stick out. I've also figured that if I were to braze the cap, collars that it's going to discolor and require polishing. Any ideas, thoughts on this?

Thanks all,

Shawn

By rodweldz (*)

Date 09-26-2010 15:54

I would probly silver braze rod

By Tommyjoking (****)

Date 09-26-2010 16:35

Sure I see no problem with doing that. Remember that your filler, using brass rod, and your rail and parts will not match in finished color, your filler will tend to be a little lighter in color. Brass polishes out very easily. Stainless toothbrush (lightly) the braze points if necessary, then go back with scotchbrite to shine up, you could probably get away with green scotchbrite on brass. If they insist on polished you need to add a few hours extra to the qoute....use very light scotchbrite on the brazed areas just to clean, then you can use a cloth wheel or one of those foam balls on a drill with some mag wheel polish to shine it out. The hardest part of that is getting it all to blend together, depending on how picky they are, where you polish will be a slightly different color then the mill finish but it will all blend out itself with weathering. Maybe just do a few test pieces of different ways to finish it so they understand what they will get before you start.

By rodweldz (*)

Date 09-26-2010 22:04

Another choice is to drill and tap . Then use brass screws.

By hillbilly (**)

Date 09-27-2010 01:22

Shawn,

I helped my old handrail mentor put a brass top rail together once. We took some scrap brass rail and tried brazing it. I wasn't able to get a seamless color match at the joint, to my liking nor his. We finally ended up using small thin pieces of the base material(brass) and were able to get a nice color match. Now remeber he was the brains in the operation I was just the grunt. haha.

By Eric Carroll (**)

Date 09-27-2010 02:13

come by the shop, Ill show you how we have done it in the past. Did a bunch of curved ones in the hermitage hotel.

Attachment: Hermitage_Hotel.jpg (48k)

By jason ritnour (*)

Date 09-28-2010 01:07

Welding brass is tricky when your trying to get the colors to match up your best bet would be to cut you filler out of the same material your using as Hillbilly said and tig it. When you weld it the heat brings the copper to the top and tends to gives you a lighter color. Instead of a brushed finish i would consider a patina finish. It takes a lot of heat to get your metal to fuse and the fumes that come from it are poiseness.