In this video, Gary Striegler walks through a custom walnut newel post he built in semi-retirement, with a focus on two things: the custom moldings he produced on his Woodmaster molder/planer, and the practical method he uses to assemble and install a hollow newel post on a landing. He also shows a short run of custom walnut handrail he made for the same job. For more, visit Carpentry with Gary Striegler on YouTube.

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi, I'm Gary Striegler, and I've been what I call semi-retired for about three years now. What that's meant for me is I get to spend more time working on things I enjoy, like teaching and building things in my shop. This walnut newel post is a great example of that.

What makes this newel post special, I think, is the custom moldings. While I was building it, I thought I really haven't shared much about something that's been a super important part of my business going back about 35 years, and that is a Woodmaster. This one is set up primarily to make moldings.

I do have another one with a helical head that makes a great planer, but being able to make short runs or even long runs of custom moldings, in this case out of walnut, has been invaluable. There have been times on insurance jobs where a client needed a very specific molding, or on a remodeling job where they needed enough trim for two or three doors and that molding wasn't available anywhere. It's a really versatile tool.

I'll share in my next video how simple it is to set up this machine to make custom molding. But for now, I want to talk more about this newel post.

Custom handrail and why the Woodmaster earns its place

Here's a great example of those two custom moldings. I've acquired a bunch of knives over the years, but even if you just have a few, you can still make moldings that are exactly what your client wants, or what your own project needs, in a short amount of time.

This other piece is part of the same job: a short section of custom walnut handrail. I took a couple pieces of walnut, ran them through the Woodmaster with a handrail-profile knife I bought years ago, then glued up a piece in the middle and sanded the whole thing down.

You could probably do that on a router table, and a lot of things you can do on a router table, but the difference with the Woodmaster is I don't have to get my hands anywhere near the cutter. It feeds in, feeds out, and it's variable speed and continuous feed. This job is a good example of what the Woodmaster lets me do: create a short run of custom walnut handrail without a lot of setup or risk.

How the newel post is assembled

So let me tilt this back and show you what's going on underneath. The post is really just four frames put together. I used butt joints. I know some people prefer miter joints, but that's never worked out well for me, and a butt joint gets the job done as long as you make sure you have an equal amount of material on each side of the corner.

Inside, there's a walnut plywood panel. One thing you need to know: clip those corners of the plywood at 45 degrees, or they'll hit each other when you put the frames together. I pocket-screwed the frames together, and on all the joints I used Gorilla Original wood glue first. When I attached the frames to each other, I was also careful to have really smooth surfaces and square edges so that when I clamped everything together I got a truly square box.

How to mount a newel post to the floor

There's one more thing I want to show while I've got this upside down: how to mount something like this to a landing floor. What I do is take some blocks of wood, put a good amount of quality construction adhesive, like this heavy-duty Gorilla construction adhesive, down on the floor, and run a bunch of wood screws into it. I'd stack up two or three blocks and leave at least an eighth of an inch all the way around so there's room to adjust.

I've made holes for pocket screws, and I'd use the longer Kreg pocket screw with the washer head going down into the subfloor. Probably at least three layers of blocks, all glued and screwed together with construction adhesive. Then I'd butter up around those blocks and down to the floor with more adhesive. For something like this, construction adhesive is absolutely your best friend.

From there, come in with a level and start checking. If you need to adjust up or down anywhere, put a small wedge underneath until you've got it plumb both ways. I'd do the same with the baseboard, running screws back into that blocking on the floor, tightening things down, and checking with a wedge in both directions.

Between having the blocks on the floor and pocket-screwing it down, you'll be amazed at how solid a newel post like this can be. These are great projects. Years ago I wrote an article for Fine Homebuilding, and it was a cover shot on building a newel post. You can probably still find it in the archives. I'm hoping to build a white pine newel post in the next few weeks and share that too. But this has been a great project, something I've really enjoyed doing in semi-retirement, and I couldn't have done it without my Woodmaster.