Spacer for Stair Rail Installation

When installing a stair rail on a wall, there comes a time when you have to position the rail the desired distance from the wall while also potentially positioning its height and its angle parallel to the stairs. When in this position, you have determine and mark or drill holes for attaching the brackets to the wall and/or the rail. These simple spacers are intended to ease fixing one of these positions: the distance from the wall. You, and probably a helper, place the flat end of the spacer against the wall and the curved end over the, presumably curved, side of the rail and push the rail slightly toward the wall. While held in this position, you can do what you need to do to the brackets and the rail, which is probably mark or drill holes.

Included here are files for spacers with various distances and from the wall: from 1.5 inch (the minimum distance in US code) to 3 inches and from 25 mm (the minimum distance in UK code) to 75 mm. For each distance, files are included for several radii of curvature: from 1/2 inch to 2.5 inches in increments of 1/8 inch and from 10 mm to 20 mm in increments of 1 mm and from 20 mm to 65 mm in increments of 5 mm. The uploaded .stl files are named like spacer_Lxxx_unit_Ryyy_unit.stl where xxx and yyy are the intended distance from the wall and curvature radius respectively and unit is "inches"or "mm". A couple of example .stl files are given and the rest are compressed and grouped in .zip files which contain all the spacers for one length with the various radii of curvature.

The spacers in the files are all 25 mm in length (along the rail), but can be scaled freely in this direction: smaller to save plastic or larger make them more stable or for whatever other purpose.

Choose a file with the desired length and a radius as as large as or larger than that of the rail. It holds nicer with less slop when the fit is closer. To measure the radius, you can print radius gauges someone else has published, or you can scale these spacers down to, say, 1 mm in thickness (z direction) and use those as gauges.

Print Settings

Supports:

No

Infill:

Category: Tools