Rusty Railing Repair

(Yes, I do love alliteration!)

So, I spent most of yesterday fixing stuff that started off looking like this:

That is the bottom up an upright that was cemented into the front stair case of a house. The owner of the house was concerned for her tenants and her own safety, since the railing was flopping about like a wet noodle.

I arrived, got set up and got to working.

I took some 1 1/4"x 1/8" strapping and bent and drilled and cut some pieces:

Then I got to fitting things together:

 A little crooked to start:

 But once I got this welded up:

The railing straightened up nicely.

I had to replace another section on the upper platform. When I drilled the hole for the wedge-lock concrete fasteners, I drilled the upper one a bit too deep . . . and I dropped the wedge bolt too far in the hole. I couldn't grab it with pliers. I couldn't "tweeze" it with screwdrivers, and i didn't happen to have any actual tweezers with me . . . so I got a bit creative with welding wire!

I bent up the end of the wire into a small circle and jammed it down over the threads:

The tension of the wire grabbed the  threads and I could pull the wedge bolt out.

After I thought I was done, the owner of the house wasn't happy with how much movement there still was in the rail. It was much safer than it was, as I could literally lean all my weight on it and yank without anything bending or breaking. I didn't actually want to put in another bracket, but, hey, the customer wants what the customer wants.

So, after painting the bases, I prepped another bracket for the other side:

Then welded it on:

I couldn't match the brackets exactly because I didn't want to get too close to the edge of the stairs because running a hammer drill close to the edge of fake stone can crack it, and that is a huge problem.

I didn't get any pics after this since it was getting dark and I had to move on to another job. The customer was very happy with the completed job, and that is all that matters.