Steel Balustrades
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010Steel Balustrades
There are many materials to choose from when deciding what to make your staircase balusters from. They can be manufactured from glass, timber, stainless steel, wire and so on. Steel is a great material for balustrading since not only is it very durable but also looks beautiful.
Steel balusters can be rounded, sqaure, decorative, or horizontal. Stairking’s Horizon balustrades consists of solid steel horizontal and vertical bars that allows for spans that keep their openness. This can be accompanied by a square timber handrail, such as the warm Australian hardwood Victorial Ash, with concealed cut strings for a modern staircase. Another example of the way in which steel can be used is in tapered steel balusters that alternate between plain and decorative, along with a wreathing scroll timber handrail. Or the balustrading could be designed as a continuously wreathing and twisting feature supporting a curved timber handrail. Horizontal steel balustrades are also a possibility, great for curved and spiral staircases.
Properties of Steel
Steel is an alloy consisting mostly of iron, with a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% that acts as a hardening agent. The more carbon added, the stronger and harded the iron becomes, but also the less ductile and more difficult to weld. Different elements are added to the iron to change the properties of the steel alloy. So nickel and manganese can be added to increase tensile strength, chromium increases the melting temperature, while chromium is added to prevent corrosion. The strength and durability of steel makes it a great material for staircase balustrading.
Modern steelmaking began in 1858 with the discovery of the Bessemer process, enabling large amounts of steel to be produced cheaply. This was rendered obsolete in the 1950s with basic oxygen steelmaking, as oxygen pumped into the furnace limited impurities. Carbon steel (also known as mild steel), composed only of iron and carbon, makes up 90% of contemporary steel production, although many alloys exist.