Railing Project

A few weeks ago my boss showed me this picture and asked me if I wanted this railing. He said he had bought them for a project at home but they weren't going to work so he wanted to get rid of them.Initially I had no idea what I would use them for but decided to take them just for the steel.

I had them in my garage for a for a while before my wife suggest using them near the entrance of the house.

When I started looking at them closer, I saw just how badly rusted they were, as you can see in this picture the leg is completely rusted through. Fortunately for what I was going to do, the railing didn't need legs.

I ended up cutting out the center area of one of the railings and proceeded to spend about 15 hours of sandblasting, wire wheeling and at some points naval jelly to remove all the rust. I would never try to do that again, at one point it was apparent that even for free the railing was worth less than the time I had invested. After getting the rust off, I used some of the metal from the remaining pieces to make tabs to mount the rail between the columns at the entrance of the house. After a coat of primer and three coats of paint I mounted it with some massive lag screws.