I've seen cable used (on the deck that our architect built at his own house), and it looks nice - unobtrusive, kind of industrial chic. His deck was grey Trex, with (I think) aluminum or steel posts, so it blended in well. We opted not to use cable on our own deck for a couple reasons: - The tension on the cables (to keep them taught) would have required substantially beefed-up posts, and would have put a lot of strain on the posts at corners, where the cables would have to make 90-degree turns. Given that we wanted to use ipe posts, rather than metal, it just wasn't practical to engineer them to take the strain of the cables - especially since the wood itself wants to move somewhat. We would have had to keep adjusting the turnbuckles to accommodate the movement of the wood, at least until it acclimated and stopped moving. - The cables are horizontal, which, with small kids in the house, makes a perfect climbing ladder, right over the top of the railing. Not a good idea for us. We opted not to use glass for exactly the reason you cited: we didn't need to spend the rest of our lives with a bottle of Windex in our hands. It wouldn't be just sprinklers and birds for us, but toddler hands and dog noses too.

Galvanized is zinc which is toxic. To make clean swages takes practice, and lots of time. I have mastered the swaging of ferrules and thimble eyes on cable ends because I have done it 1,000's of times. The measurements must be precise, which is extremely difficult for long pieces of non-rigid material. The ferrule has to be crimped in a certain order to tighten up to the thimble and then to elongate and cover up the sharp, frayed end of the wire rope. You must use 7x19 wire rope for bendability. You will find it nearly impossible to swage ferrules with thimbles in the field. The eyebolt must be connected first, then feed the cable through the posts, pull it as tight as possible, secure it in the tight position and swage the stop ferrule to the end. then figure out how to make it a clean edge. I pay the $1,500 for the prefabbed stainless cables with the clean tensioners, wire rope grabs and end caps. I have already mastered cable making so it is an easy decision. It takes me a few hours to run the cables on a standard deck. The post drilling and installation is the bulk of the labor. My buddy likes the look of my deck railing but had never even unspooled a roll of wire rope. He tried your idea. 4 years later he still has the rolls of cable in the garage and keeps asking me to borrow the tool to make the clean ends he sees on other cable assemblies I put together (on gates and such.) He doesn't understand the clean end is the result of 1,000's of times practicing. He thinks I have an automatic press that does it for you! So forget the zinc wire rope and making your own cable assemblies. You can already save $4,500 by buying the prefabbed ones and DIY.

I recently completed a DIY install of Hansen's Cable Railing system. This is a summary of my experience. I selected Hansen after a great deal of research. Although there are cheaper options, their prices seemed to be midpoint, and their quality promised to be excellent. There were good points and bad points to my experience with Hansen, that I will detail shortly, but in the end I would recommend their product if you have no stairs, and recommend another company's product if you have any stairs involved. My build involved a (roughly) 13' x 22' deck surrounded on 3 sides with 42" cable railing, plus a stairs with cable rail on both sides and a handrail, plus a short run of 5-steps stairs with cable on one side, plus 13' of cable around 2 sides of a patio. Altogether, Hansen charged 8800 for the rails, posts, cable, fittings, screws, etc... I recommend waiting until your deck is built before ordering the product, as having different dimensions or angles then given to Hansen can lead to serious issues. However, I actually ordered before my deck build and made sure that the deck adhered to plans. After they charge your card for a deposit, Hansen draws up plans which they send to you for approval. This provides a comprehensive pick list of materials and ensures that their butt is covered if there is a problem. There is about a 2-3 week lag between initial payment and plan approval and when they manufacture and ship. The product came delivered by freight in a pallet of posts, plus a VERY long skinny package with the rails. I needed two strong people to carry the long package, and fortunately the delivery person used a forklift to put the pallet in a good place. During the install, I found that they made 3 mistakes (leaving out 1 cable for each side of the stairs and messing up the size of one post) but were good about fixing the problems. I went with mostly fascia mounted posts to maximize deck space and also strength of post supports, with some in concrete. The brackets and posts feel very beefy and solid. I went with the powdercoated color, and for the most part the product paint was excellent. However there was one post with bubbles on the paint, and all of the stairs post caps had terrible paint jobs. Their system feels very well thought out, with some exceptions I will mention shortly, and clearly they have engineered it to pass code. The install went smoothly. The positives were: my sales representative, Doug Heizenrader, was very helpful in both the ordering process and install process, explaining design and intall options. Also, they provide almost all of the hardware you need, in one convenient package. I had to buy a tool for cutting cable (I went with a Dremel UltaMax saw because cutting stainless cable is super hard), for swaging cable (got the Lehigh swaging tool), and had to purchase concrete wedge anchors for the brackets that went into concrete. The install process is: mount the brackets (4 large lag screws per post) which sometimes requires adding some washers to straighten the post. Then put all the posts upside down in the brackets, use a laser level to mark a consistent distance above the highest point of the deck, and cut all the posts to length. Then put all the posts right side up, install railing, then screw in the posts to the brackets. They provide excellent Tek screws for much of these tasks, and the amount of predrilling needed is reasonable. As for the negative, I was shocked to find that the stairs posts were completely blank, I was expected to drill these myself. This involves making a template (I used a piece of laminate flooring) and positioning the template against the top rail to properly position the holes. Although this may not sound like a big imposition, it is very time consuming because there are say 11 holes on each side of each stairs post. Furthermore, I found out (the hard way) that the holes have to be drilled at an angle that mimics the eventual path of the cable, or it is difficult/impossible to thread the cable and the cable wont lie right and will excessively rub. So I actually had to drill every hole TWICE. Similarly, I found that Hansen did NOT drill the corner post holes (where the cable makes a 90 degree turn) at an angle, with the result being that I had to drill these with my hand drill. Requiring me to drill these holes is really bad, in my opinion, because the result with a hand drill is far inferior to what hansen could achive with their machining; and drilling aluminum is difficult to get high quality results as the metal mushrooms easily. Not to mention the significant amount of extra time and effort. There is NO good reason that Hansen should require us to do this part of the install; given accurate rise-run measurements on the stairs, any necessary adjustments can be made by altering the height of the post, which is a standard part of the install for non-stairs posts. When I queried Doug at Hansen about this, he basically admitted that they do it because sometimes customers give inaccurate rise-run measurements. This is a piss poor reason to require customers to drill and achieve a lower quality result in my opinion. Also, their instructions are incomplete when it comes to cutting the cable. Their instructions are "cut the cable 1/2" from the face of the post after pulling it taut". However, this will be disastrous if applied to stairs, where you actually need to cut the cable 1/2" PAST the face of the post due to the diagonal path thru the post and the larger washer. I managed to catch this, but they should really include such directions for everyone. Another potential problem is that their fascia mounted brackets put the post a good 1.5" away from the fascia, and the cables 2.5"; if your decking does not overhang the fascia, this gap is excessive and a sideways foot can easily slip off the deck. Another tricky thing for those of us who have never swaged before, is to realize that the swage closest to the threads should not be closer than a half inch from the threads, as the cable only extends a certain amount into the threaded terminal. In summary, I found their system well designed, the product high quality, and their execution excellent. HOWEVER, I DO NOT recommend their product if you have stairs or if you have alot of 90 degree posts, as they require you to do alot of unnecessary work that comes out below standard, and they do not properly document the cable cutting process for stairs.

you know your kids...so obviously take that into account, but every time I thought I had "safety-proofed"" something in my house, my oldest child (my only climber) would figure out some way to scale it. That is my kids too. I think at their current ages if they want to climb they will find a way regardless of the railing. I can see them going to get the ladder themselves and trying to sneak it through the house. Maybe I'll make the porch for adults only. LOL! What about samples, and I am not talking about the railing. Mark, I usually have an idea of where you're headed with the cryptic messages, but I'm not following this one. Can you explain what type of samples your referencing? @Doc5md, I'd love to see pics if you get a chance to post them!