The Left (and Right) Staircase

Now that I've got my bricks with the magnets made, it's time to build the staircases. everything in this post, I also did for the right staircase, I just mirrored it.

The first layer here shows the basic shape. The first picture, I marked the spots with an "X" and I will not glue the second layer there. This is for attachment pieces, more on that later.

This second picture is the bottom of it. The arrows show the location and direction of the magnets.

   Next is the second level. Again the "X" and dots are  where I won't glue.



Next, I added the third level, not gluing in the marked areas. Then the decorative pieces, floor tiles,  and railing.



The reason I didn't glue these parts is because in the multiple configurations I intend to use with this, the railings were all different, so instead of building multiple stairs this allows for the the same piece used for different setups. Here's a picture of the 3 different railing parts.

From them picture above I inserted the the back piece and added the wall piece for the other side and you get the next set of pictures.

With that pieces assembled, The top staircase piece can now sit on top of it.

Again, I also built the right staircase the same way just a mirrored version of the left, also with attachments. Below are the parts assembled with a different couple of configurations.

NOTE: Since both of the staircases have magnets in them, I had to make sure they didn't repel each other.

 First hers's a cofiguration without the stairs.

And here's another option with the top stairs added.







Next, the final piece to build.

Magnets

As a I designed this I saw that I would have a piece that was only a half inch wide and would sit flush up against the staircase in one of the configurations. A nice shake of the table or bump on the piece could knock it over and chip or break it. So I thought about magnets. The first thing I got was the roll tape magnet. That didn't work at all, not enough magnetism in them to make it stick. Eventually I found these near rare earth magnets on Amazon the were 1/4" inch cubes. The picture below is for reference.

As you can see below, these cubes fit neatly in standards bricks and 1/2" bricks though I didn't need any of those.

   In the casting process, after you let the mold sit for the time to let it set and then scrape, you can easily push the magnet into the brick mold.

   

NOTE: after pushing it into the mold, you'll need to scrape it again. Make sure you use a plastic scrapper, otherwise your metal one will suck the magnet righ out of the plaster.

   Since these are near rare earth magnets, their ability to repel each other is just as strong as their attraction. So when making these bricks you need to plan ahead with what bricks go where and make sure the repelling doesn't occur. For this project I had to make 8 of these bricks for the left staircase.

 Here's a picture to show where I embedded the magnets for the left side of the staircase.

   The magnets worked perfectly. They are so strong that when the wall piece doesn't move even when picking up the entire stair.