First I looked up standard spiral stair dimensions on the web and decided how wide and high every step should approximately be. I chose the radius of the stairs to be 7 cm, and using a pair of compasses drew a curve on the wooden pieces.
I used the end of the curve on the longer side of the triangle as a guide when sanding, to give each stair a round edge.
Next, I used a piece of the center column to mark the tips of the steps and used my Dremel tool to sand them down to exact shape. This way I wanted to ensure that the steps wrap the center column perfectly when gluing.
Then I used some leftover window frame pieces from older kits, cut them to the size of the shorter radius side of the triangles and glued them to the lower side of each step of the stairs to look like supports.
I marked each step at the same place on the outer border, to know where to place the supports when gluing them, which helped me achieving a standard look. I also marked the column for the placement of the steps.
I tried a couple of paints for the steps but was not really happy with the results. Finally, I mixed some dark varnish, transparent varnish and orange and red pastels to get a softer color. I only painted the upper side and the upper edges of the steps with this color, the lower parts got painted in acrylic black for a mat finish.
Once the varnish/paint was fully dry, I started gluing the steps one by one on the column, ensuring that each step keeps the same distance to the previous one. After each step I painted the column in acrylic black, which also helped covering any glue marks.
This felt a bit like building a house of cards to be honest...
And voila! Done. I must admit I'm pretty proud with myself at this point, because this felt like something impossible to do at the beginning, but turned out being pretty straight forward in the end.
Good night!
Susi
