More novice decking questions - balustrades

[matthew.larkin]

All going well, boards nicely laid, so its onto the handrails.

I've bought handrails, baserails, spindles and fillets. I can put all those together to give a nice effect, but then when I'm attaching the handrail and baserail to the post all I can seem to come up with is to use a couple of angled brackets. That doesn't sound particularly neat to me - is that the usual way to do it?

Alternatives that come to mind are:-

-Fit both ends of the handrail with dowels and plug into holes in the posts. I can see that working, apart from having to wiggle the posts wide enough to allow them all to fit, and the baserail isn't thick enough to have dowels inserted.

-slice one of the spindles in half and attach that to the post. Use this to conceal an angled bracket at the top and bottom (I quite like this idea, but my wife says it sounds a bit mad and would look odd)

Any other good suggestions or pointers?

Thanks in advance!

Matt

[Kevin]

mine has a metal bracket hidden by the fillets and a decorative cap no need to bend the posts , did you not get the instructions with the bits? or is that only with the Richard Burbidge parts

[The Medway Handyman]

The baserail doesn't need to be attached to the post unless its above the level of the deck, normally they are just screwed down to the deck board.

I pocket hole drill the handrail from the underside & screw it to the post using 2 screws - very strong & invisible. You could do the same with a base rail that was above deck level.

Use a 6mm auger bit & drill from the end of the handrail at an angle downwards into the fillet groove. Can be done by hand or use a simple jig

decking screws or turbogolds.

[matthew.larkin]

jig

> Use decking screws or turbogolds.

Excellent, thanks (again!).

I think I'll go down the Kreg jig route as that looks like making life nice and simple.

The baserail is going to be floating so that we can brush away underneath it (we've got three, soon to have four children, so liberally distributed stones / muck etc will soon be all over the deck!!). I'm not entirely certain that the baserail will be deep enough to take the pocket holes, but I'll check that out when the jig arrives.

Matt