Thursday, April 4, 2013

Making Grabrails

I'm not sure if the old cabintop grabrails were original or not, but they were so thin from being sanded so many times that they probably weren't safe and just weren't going to cut it.  They were also pretty badly bleached and stained from so many years in the sun that they looked pretty ugly.  So I went to Goosebay Lumber earlier this week and picked out a nice 5/4 x 6" piece of Sapele to make a new set of them.

I know there are many ways to make grabrails and by staggering the rails on the single board I could have cut down on the waste, but it's a lot more work to do it that way so I chose to make them by opposing each rail on the board so I could cut each of the six the bases of both rails with one cut from the hole saw.

I started by laying out the old rails to mark the base positions on the piece of Sapele.  I never noticed before, but the old rails were not the same size.  One was about 3/4 inch longer than the other and the bases didn't quite line up.  Dammit, can't anything be easy?  So I took the rails back over to the boat and found that although they weren't the same size, they were bolted to the cabintop with the same 12 inch on center pattern (there are matching grabrails on the inside of the cabin that they afix to).  So using 12 inch on center as the known center for the bases of the new rails, I carefully layed out the dimensions and marked the radius centers to cut.   

Using a 3 inch hole saw, I cut each hole about 3/4 of the way through the board, making sure the center drill penetrated the entire board so I could use that as a guide on the other side.  Then I flipped the board over and finished each hole cut.

Next I set the tablesaw fence to 2-7/16 inches to account for the 1/8 inch blade kerf on the tablesaw and ripped the board down the middle.  Now I had two pieces that were rapidly starting to look like grabrails.

I moved onto the band saw and cut out the waste wood between each of the holes.  I initially tried using the bandsaw fence so the cut would go straight, but it seemed to bind things up a bit so I removed the fence and just cut it freehand along the line I had previously drawn that connected each hole.  I've found that as long as I have a line to follow on the band saw and the radius isn't too tight, I can make cuts with it that are almost perfectly straight.

I put a rough 5 inch radius curve on either end of each with the band saw.  Once that was complete the two rails needed to be cleaned up a bit with my Shinto rasp and then the finer standard wood rasp.  

After I was satisfied that everything was reasonably fair, I moved the boards outside and set them up on sawhorses and busted out the router with the round over bit.  Then it was just a matter of carefully following all the edges and smoothing everything out.

I finished up by going over both grabrails with 150 grit paper. I'll follow up with 220 grit once I'm ready to varnish.  This weekend I'll tap out the holes for the bolts and get them dry fitted on the boat.  I will probably have to bevel the base edges to account for the deck camber.  Once I get the proper angle I'll just run them through the table saw and that should take care of it.  I think they turned out looking really good. I like the larger base width and the overall size of them is a bit beefier and will feel more sturdy.  I can't wait to get a few coats of varnish on them, they will be stunning.


  1. Those rails look great. I found some teak rails at the local marine store for about 32 each. Thinking I might just buy them for my A30 and save myself the trouble if they're not much more than building them myself.
    I'm enjoying watching your progress!

    1. $32 is a steal, but make sure the bolt patterns are the same, mine weren't. I'm pretty sure that the crew who was working the shift when they installed the original grabrails were drunk. Some holes are 12" on center, some 11", some 11.5".

      The Sapele I purchased for the grabrails was part of a bigger order that was north of $200, but I would guess that the wood I used for the grabrails came to more than $32 and teak is a whole lot more expensive than Sapele.

  2. You have done a great job. I can never think of working this much on a really long procedure, well explained. It seems like you have lots of equipments as well, made really appreciable rails.

  3. Thanks carrick, good tools make all the difference with stuff like this.