How to cut
3 Step Stair Stringer
Building Basic Stair Stringers
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today I'm building the steps for this
ground-level entry deck and it thought
it was a perfect opportunity to teach
you the basics of making stringers now
there are two main factors to take into
consideration when you're laying out
your stringer the rise of the steps and
the run start with the run now in this
case because I was building the deck I
had some control over the run so I'm
dictating the run by how wide I want
each tread to be I'm going to use to
deck boards they're each five and a half
inches so my run is about eleven inches
per step there's going to be one two
steps so that's about 22 inches so I
built this deck so the rim joist is
roughly 22 inches from where I want the
front edge of the steps now if you were
building steps on an existing deck where
you had to hit a certain mark then you
need to measure that distance and divide
it by the number of steps to determine
how wide each tread should be now the
rise of the deck is the distance from
the top of your decking down to whatever
your landing is in this case I installed
some paver stones over several inches of
compacted gravel to determine this
height I'm just going to use my level
I'm going to measure down from the
bottom of the level down to the landing
and my measurement is 20 and 5/8 inches
now I divide that by three and the
result of that is about 6 and 5/8 inches
so now that I've determined the rise in
the run I'm ready to lay out the
dimensions on this 2 by 12 stringer I'm
going to use my framing square this side
will be the rise this side will be the
run so this edge will be six and
seven-eighths my rise I'll hold that
point and then the run is 10 and 3/4
that's that point double check to make
sure they haven't changed and I can mark
the stringer
next I'm going to move the framing
square up and position it so that run
intersects the rise line from the
previous and I'm going to set it up just
the same way ten and three-quarter run
six and 7/8 rise now that we mark the
run of the top tread I'm going to use
the carpenter's square to extend that
rise line down and that's going to be
the back of the stringer next I'm going
to mark the rise of the bottom step
now this sometimes confuses people
because it's the bottom step
there's no tread under it so we subtract
the thickness of one tread from the rise
so in this case instead of six and
seven-eighths inches the rise of the
bottom step will be 5 and 7/8 inches
finally we'll mark the bottom of the
string and that's simply a line that's
perpendicular to the rise of the bottom
step and we locate that at 5 and 7/8 the
mark we just made if you're only making
two stringers it's easy enough to lay
them out individually but in my case I'm
cutting out 7 small stringers so I chose
to make this template so I can trace
them out now our stringers laid out and
we're ready to cut
now I'm ready to attach them to the deck
first thing I did was measure down the
rise of each step six and seven-eighths
from the top of the rim joist snap the
line and that marks the top of all the
stringers then I attach the stringers
using these metal connectors and
structural connector screws
you
