The Turning Point Woodworks Inc has turned hundreds, if not thousands of spindles over the years. From Stairway spindles & balustrades to Chair spindles, and bed spindles, spinning wheel spindles, and specialty spindles, we get spindle orders for anything and everything. Spindle turning defines us. And no railing is complete without it spindles. Whether you need just one, or 1000, we can handle it. We can also design your spindle if needed.
6 BALUSTERS COPIED FROM ORIGINAL. MADE FROM OLD GROWTH FIR.
TABLE LEGS
Table legs
Newel posts
Newel Post Finial. Crack in base is normal, being from one piece of old growth pine. Crack was primed and epoxied upon install and is thus invisible.
Whether interior, or exterior, The Turning Point Woodworks Inc. excels at creating one of a kind custom railings. As always, we strive to give our clients a railing system that not only looks as good as it can with the style of ones home, but is well made from the beginning and installed correctly and safely following all codes.
custom railing for victorian homes.
Railing and caps from naturally finished hard maple. Balusters and posts from pine, painted white.
Railing was built to fit into (original) half wall with its naturally finished top. I made the (half) newel hug into the half wall with the top of the newel being full as if the half wall hugs into the newel.
Sometimes a simple looking railing is the best looking railing
A Victorian house with 4 Custom turned & fabricated Newel Posts from old growth reclaimed redwood. Custom railings also from redwood.
Victorian style house with fancy stairway built with reclaimed old growth redwood.
Piece to connect a straight top landing rail to a staircase railing
Every now & then, one has to carve a piece by hand, and a railing connection piece is a perfect example. It would have been next to impossible to locate this piece already made somewhere, as the railing is over 100 years old.
This section of the porch was at one time part of the house before becoming the porch once again. It required that 4 new porch posts be turned and railing and gingerbread be made.
Every now & then, we do flat sawn balusters. A custom jig has to made in order to get each one looking the same. These are made from reclaimed old growth fir which should last many decades.
As always, our stairway railings match the porch rails
Made Two of these, one for each side of a marble patio. The boxes breath as well as the railings. The railings are covered with galvanized metal. All wood used is reclaimed old growth fir or redwood.
Cap on top of box permits the hot moist air to escape on hot and/or humid days, preventing wood decay & rot within the newel box.
Despite box being breathable, The box also employs a floating panel with frames holding the floating panel being mortise & tenon built. This construction lets the panel move with changes in the weather while the frame is strong and sturdy.
Just one of the hundreds of custom railing we have made and installed. This one employing custom 1 piece balusters from pine with 3-1/2 x 3'-1/2 square tops & bottoms.
Making sure our railings are always level.
Railing is held to wall with 3 brackets, each with two screws. Take screws out and railing can easily be removed in order to permit easier moving of furniture.
Boxes are made with mortise & tenon frames with floating panels.
All are made from reclaimed old growth redwood.
Over 200 balusters for this project.
Flat sawn lattice and bottom of porch constructed with treated wood, aged one year before being primed and painted.
New porch floor with stain
Still another section to be installed after roof is fixed.
Steps & railgs constructed from reclaimed old growth redwood.
Older top rails had rotted near newel posts, so I replaced them with new top rails made from reclaimed old growth redwood. Cutting rails to fit was tricky since cutting a half round must be done at an angle. (think about it).
Notice the top rail is comprised of 4 pieces, the bottom rail 2.
Older homes have a style created from many factors. One, old growth forests yielded superior lumber, tight grained, wide boards of superior workability and endurance. This enabled the workers, craftsmen and carpenters, many who hailed directly from Europe and trained in superb craftsmanship with skills handed down from one generation to the next, to exploit these skills in the new world. Often architects & builders competed against each other to see who could build the best homes. These homes came with old world amenities that were not only useful, but stylish too, and added to the overall design of any particular home or building.
Over the years, as styles changed, the home has evolved and the house of yesteryear is just that. Often these parts of this bygone style are damaged or missing. The Turning Point Woodworks Inc. excels at replicating and repairing those parts in their authentic style, using (when possible) the same or equal lumber species; If needed, we can assist in installation as well.
Window Hood needed to be reshaked requiring some tricky cutting of the shakes.
Sill is "cone" shaped (kind of like cutting out an outer section of a giant thick satellite dish). to replace the original.
Window hoods are not very common. Very few and far between in America. This house has two of them.
Shaking this window hood was a challenge. Each shake had to be by hand on the spot.
Made to look like all the others on this particular house.
Tricky gluing up job. One is halved.
Turning large posts is never easy.
The Turning Point Woodworks main specialty is always going to porches, followed by decks (that closely resemble porches in their main construction). We do a lot of both. The porch is usually in front of the house, while the deck is usually in back of the house. Porches were implemented on homes back in the day when air conditioning wasn't invented yet and were a place not only to cool off, but to socialize with neighbors and friends. Porches often display fancy ornate railings, columns or posts and can help enhance the exterior and make a home much more inviting.
Decks on the other hand are a rather new modification but serve many of the same purposes, only in a more private, more open atmosphere. Both Decks & Porches can benefit with well designed attributes such as railings, posts, stairs as well as benches, trellises and other attributes. Whichever one it is, we want your porch/deck to look good with the house, and look as it belongs to the style. The Turning Point Woodworks excels at both.
Nothing prepares one for a railing connection where the post is square & the railing not only goes off to an angle on one side, but on another side as well. Its slow going, taking off a little here & a little there.
I came up with these bench legs when I could not think of a better way. It turns out they fit stylishly with the bench, and the porch.
So many porch undercarriages are jury rigged over the years without the problem being addressed.
Never an easy job.
Column bases are an important part of every column. Too often, one sees column bases that are just pieces of wood cut into a circle or worse, an octagon,mostly because people who are woodturners are hard to find, and then when they are found, column bases are not part of what they do. Not only does The Turning Point Woodworks excel at replicating authentic column bases, but we can install them too.Column bases make up a huge part of Architectural Woodturning, and The Turning Point Woodworks has done hundreds. Very large ones, as well as square ones too. We use the best lumber, the best glue, the best construction techniques and strive to give you column bases that will last as long as the originals.
Here at the Turning Point Woodworks Inc, We see a large assortment of the unusual. Lots of woodturning of items that require the services of a professional woodturning firm. However, we are also known as highly skilled craftsmen, therefore we get a pretty good array of the artsy and unusual jobs as well. Jobe requiring design skills as well as expert craftsmanship. So whether one needs a spoon rack, a spinning wheel part, a chess set, a cribbage board, a kite winder, game pieces etc etc, we have the means and skills to give you what your looking for. Its just not all woodturning, but lots of other stuff as well.
Aside from woodturning and restoration projects, The Turning Point Woodworks prides itself on custom color schemes. Once known for doing color schemes on a nation wide basis, The Turning Point Woodworks strives for a style that is stately, elegant and balanced with its colors. We also pay attention to which sheen every color should have, whether it should be flat, satin or gloss. There was a time in which the only paint jobs we would take on, were those that came with a color scheme. After all, lets give a house a good looking suit; One that it can wear for a long period of time, and show off its attributes.
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Every now & then, we get a real brain buster of a project. A project requiring intense planning as well as execution. A project where just as much thought has to go into it, as the work itself in order that it turns out perfectly (as planned). The Turning Point Woodworks takes these projects very seriously (as with all orders of course), in order to assure the client that they not only get what they want, but get results over & above what they expected.
Turns out, it was a piece from a repair job on the column. I copied the repair piece on over 200 brd feet of lumber, but did eventually correct it.
Sample I had had groove 1"-3/4"wide. Original column flute was 2" wide. I corrected flute by shifting knives over 1/8" & running each side over again to get the 2".
Each carved to match flute on column
Blank was glued up with paper down the middle, so it would be able to be halved, in order to have one for each side of Roman Ionic capital. (A lot easier than turning two).
Carving scroll was the easy part, However carving the disk that sticks out was too difficult without tear-out, so I did the carving in plaster, which was mush easier.
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Again used paper to be able to divide it into the four pieces I would need to complete both sides of capital.
Capital goes together in two pieces, because column will need to be bolted in place first and will have supporting pieces sticking out the top.
Grid it was built on, also served as a pallet to transport it, and helped it slide off the truck with the bottom landing on the cement base. We then lifted the top to vertical using a boom lift. It was a one time deal, no 2nd chances.
I did have to take 1"-3/4" off of column at bottom, when capital was fitted, I was just 1/8" too high on one side.
wood repair, rotted wood, fix it, old growth, reclaimed, capital, redwood, cedar, window sills, windows, window, bases, column base
In 2015 I received a call from a client in Illinois who was inquiring if I could save severely deteriorated windows. Saving as much wood as possible. These windows came from the first dome home built by Buckminster Fuller in 1961.
The windows were in awful shape. Asking me to save them, without using any new wood, would later prove to be impossible, although I did try.
In order for the epoxy to overtake rotted wood, you have to first treat the old wood with a hardening preservative, then drill as many holes in the compromised wood as you can get away with before filling with a quality epoxy.
Some of the projects we take on fit in many different categories, or no category so we bunch them together here. It can include finials, game pieces, plant stands, cribbage boards and what not. From Woodturning to handmade items, The Turning Point Woodworks Inc. is your source for all woodworking.
Over the years, The Turning Point Woodworks has had its share of vintage home restoration. We understand the workings of the older home, the design and the craftsmanship that went into them. While we can replicate and repair just about any aspect of the vintage home, we also understand the need to add modernization where its wanted or needed. We try to do this in a way where it harmonizes with the old, so one can have the modern day conveniences and amenities without totally sacrificing on the vintage charm. We do however strive to stay historical as much as we can, believing some vintage house components are still better than modern day replacements. We have the ability to find that balance and to implement it in a reasonable manner.
