Glass railing detail design

Glass railing detail design 

Glass railing and steel stair fire escape designed to wrap around back porch and attach to rock outcrop below

This glass railing detail design is one I recently completed. It was being used as a code compliant fire escape for a cottage in Northern Ontario, Canada. 

Glass railing design is popular nowadays but it requires experience in assembling and fabricating with thick heavy sheets of glass. As well, you need to control costs since even with modern CNC glass cutting machines there is a lot of waste which the contractor has to pay for

 Glass railing panels also have to be tempered which means they have to be accurately cut first time because the tempering process does not allow you to go back and make changes to the size of panels if they do no assemble correctly or if holes do not line up to stair treads.

Glass railing clamps and brackets

Glass railing clamps and brackets used to support and attach glass. All have rubber or plastic inserts that actually grip the glass and isolate it from touching any metal. Metal fasteners do not make contact with the glass. Tempered glass and metal really, really do not get along especially at the edges of the glass where any metal contact at all can cause the glass to shatter. In some cases he fasteners for stair treads and handrails require oversize holes to be made in the glass for plastic bushings.

One job I did recently used the glass railing spigots in the picture below to support the bottom of the glass railing on all the stair risers. These brackets allow the glass panels to be adjusted back and forth and even tilted in order to get perfect alignment between panel to panel

Glass railing clamp or spigot used for monting panels on stair risers

Where fasteners are going right through the glass, oversize holes accommodate minor adjustments necessary to align neighbouring glass panels. The fasteners often have extra large diameter heads to completely cover the holes. Rubber washers behind attachment screws secure against the face of the glass to hold it securely once adjusments are made

Glass stair panels with oversize mounting holes to allow for fit adjustment

Glass cutting and drawings

3d layout of the panels helps because you can visualize the installation of the panels to make sure there wont be any interference points. It also allows you to turn the glass panel drawings into DXF files which can be loaded directly into a CNC glass cutting machine.CNC glass railing cutting problems

 In some shops plywood templates are made to the exact size of the required glass railing, then these are photographed, the photos scanned and then the scans sketched over to provide CAD information for CNC glass cutting. This process can cause all sorts of errors.

 By scanning digital photographs, errors can be caused by shadows and improper lighting of the plywood templates. The person sketching in CAD over top of a photograph, or the scanner reading a photo and recognizing the edges of the panel can mistake a shadow for an edge, causing expensive mistaken dimension errors.

 To make this worse, the carpenter or contractor ordering the glass has to pay for the entire sheet of  thick glass used in the cutting process including the scrap. Something that is often overlooked in price per square foot estimates. Stair panels are often irregular shapes that leave large amounts of offcuts. Its not uncommon for the price of a panel to be doubled due to scrap.3D Design as a stair tool

Using OnShape to check for problems

3D design tools give the glass railing installer or carpenter a means to check fit and alignment before commiting to an expensive glass purchase. If panels dont align on the computer screen, measuring points can be rechecked. Measurements can be taken off the 3D model and verified in the field.

Providing the glass cutter with DXF files eliminates errors due to sketching over a photograph, or depending on scanning software to recognize edges. The best way to reduce errors, is to get the shape into the glass cutting software directly so that that the glass railing is cut exactly to the same dimensions as it was designed to.

I have worked with Dan Klick from K-Weld Inc on several projects. He is a meticulous craftsman when it comes to the installation and fabrication of projects such as glass railings, gates and steel stairs. His website shows a ton of great pictures of projects he has completed. Well worth looking at if you are considering a stair or glass handrail project.