To complete the modern look we were going after on our home, we decided on stainless steel cable railing. I bought the supplies from Vevor, to those unititiated, I like to think of it as Harbor Freight solely on line with a wider selection of things. It is important to keep the Harbor Freight analogy in mind, the quality while improved significantly in recent years, can sometimes leave a little bit to be desired. This is particularly evident in instructions.
With this in mind, here is how I created my horizontal cable railing system:
I started with a simple sketch in my trusty quad-rule notebook to get an idea of dimensions and proportions.
From there, I had to get good dimensions of the opening of each bay in my porch roof structure support system.
Next I would create a cut-list of the different pieces of metal I would need to cut.
I created a template to make sure the hole spacing in each upright was consistent.
I drew up a quick .dwg file for my mounting brackets and took that to a local company with a laser cutter and had them laser cut me enough brackets to leave some extras for my inevitable mistakes.
The guy running the laser table really knew his stuff and got me a great finish, the pipe dropped right into the hole letting me easily center the uprights and horizontal supports in the brackets for a nice, nearly professional look.
Then I used my mag-drill to drill the 10.5 mm holes specified by the shaky Vevor instructions for the cable protectors, in the interior uprights. The two outside uprights got 1/4" holes for the cable railing ends.
Next I tacked everything together and brought it over to the bay to check fit. Any differences were measured and adjustments were made to the horizontal supports.
Then everything was finish-welded, ground to a decent finish, and spray-painted.
Next, I strung the cables and used a Harbor Freight Hydraulic tool intended for crimping cable ends on electrical cables to swage my cable ends on the Vevor Stainless Cable.
After this I tightened the cables per code, which specifies that you can't have a 4" sphere able to pass between the cables. This is to ensure children can't get their head stuck in between the cables.
Finally, I lifted the railing sections into the porch bays and secured them with 1/4" lag bolts.