JLC Online: For me, framing a curved staircase has always been something that separates those who can frame from those who are simply framers. Ever since I saw a diagram in Will Holladay's book A Roof Cutter's Secrets to Framing the Custom Home showing how to frame a circular stair, I'd been itching to frame one. It turns out that it isn't particularly difficult. With guidance from Holladay's book and a framer named John Kirkpatrick who routinely does this, I was able to frame a free-standing curved stair in less than eight hours.
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When I first started to delve into the world of design and production, I took a summer zoom class where our introduction to the ideas of drafting and modeling sets was to learn the platform SketchUp. And one of our first assignments was to use SketchUp to create a curved staircase! So this was a super cool reminder of that class. I remember finding it difficult even to render (as I was learning) and so it’s so interesting now learning how you would actually go about constructing one - from examining the Stairways Manufacturers Association codes all the way to adding a laminated stringer to the frame. Based on his reference in the article, I googled A Roof Cutter's Secrets to Framing the Custom Home's diagram for framing a circular stair, and found one - it reminded me so much of/it’s literally drafting! It’s cool to see some of the practical uses for what we’re learning, and this was just another example of the importance and uses of good drafting.
I built a set for Mamma Mia where we had a curved staircase and instead of planning out the stairs with drawings or something of the sort, the TD taped the floor in the general shape of the staircase and built off that. We got angels by just lining up our boards and drawing them in with a pencil. All that is to say, I was curious how you were actually supposed to build a curved staircase. It turns out that what we did was pretty close to what you are supposed to do. When reading this article I learned a lot about staircase codes and frankly I didn’t even know that was a thing. I found that this article would have been a lot more helpful with pictures. I had trouble picturing what the author was describing in my head. A slideshow was included but it wasn’t super helpful.
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