Battle won! Ned Oreskovic's Australian War Memorial commission

Above: Ned Oreskovic with one of the custom-built spiral staircases in spotted gum that his team completed for the Australian War Memorial last year.

Making custom-built spiral staircases, cappings and handrails for the Australian War Memorial in Canberra was a high-end commission that built on Ned Oreskovic’s family tradition of creating heritage quality work. Ned’s business goes by the name of Details By Ned and specialises in custom timber fabrication.

From February through to December 2024, this extensive project with complex curves and requirements throughout presented a series of challenges which required a creative and yet methodical approach. We asked Ned to tell us more about the project and some of the stages involved.

Ned, can you tell us about the AWM project?
My business was ten months old. I was working by myself doing small residential projects. One of these projects was a Georgian style staircase with hand carved timber handrails. While I was working on these, a friend of mine who was working at the Australian War Memorial approached me and asked if I was able to look at some handrails they were doing there.

I told them I was able to look at the job and about an hour later received a phone call from the operations manager at Kane Constructions, Phillipa Seldon. We briefly discussed the job and exchanged contact information. She then sent me the plans for the two spiral staircases at the southern entrance of the Australian War Memorial.

The project very quickly grew from us only doing the handrails to us doing all of the timber work and veneer work, except for the treads and rises on the two spiral stairs, along with the extremely technical blackbutt balustrade capping and handrail through the Central Atrium. At this point my tradesman Billy Medved started with Details By Ned full-time to assist with the workload.

Two views of the spiral staircases in-progress – complex curves featured throughout.

What were the stages and how long did it take?
The first stage was the construction planning stage. We looked through the plans and design concepts figuring out how to actually build these stairs. Once we had worked out on paper how were going to do this, the sample stage was next. This consisted of providing and installing a very small portion of the complete finished product and then getting those samples approved by the architects and builders.

Once approved, the next big stage was material procurement and storage, which posed a lot of challenges because this was by far the biggest job we yet had, and we were not set up for such a large volume of material.

Once we overcame the storage challenges the only thing left to do was build it all. For the next six months Billy and I worked ridiculous hours, sometimes finishing our working days at 12am was not uncommon and doing seven day working weeks to keep up with the challenging timelines and obstacles that came with this job. We managed to get the first of the spiral staircases handed over with just hours to spare before handover.

Blackbutt was the specified timber for the Australian War Memorial custom designed and built handrails and cappings.

Is this your normal line of work? If not, what is? Do you have a team?
When we took this job on our standard line of work was still in very niche timber work and custom doors but on a far smaller scale. It was after the handover of the first AWM spiral staircase that we decided to expand our crew and employ another two tradesmen to assist with the remaining works.

Since the Australian War Memorial staircase project, we have moved in to the commercial space, producing large scale projects around handrails and balustrades. We have also become very well versed in producing spiral staircases for residential projects. We currently have a team of four qualified tradesmen and one apprentice and are looking to grow further.

What did these staircases replace? Or were they part of a new building?
This project was part of an extension and renovation, from what I understand, the areas where the spiral staircases are was previously basement space. The Central Atrium was always a large Atrium that had two staircases in it and has been completely redesigned and rebuilt. The two spiral staircases take you from the southern entrance and Oculus up to the Pool of Reflection and Eternal Flame.

How do you even approach designing such a complex A to B route? Curves, twists and stair treads that need to fall within certain parameters for usage?
We designed we would build our portion of the stairs but Kane Constructions were the ones that dealt with the specifications of the stairs as far as where handrails needed to go and tread sizes.

The complex geometry of the blackbutt capping and handrails required spot-on accuracy.

As far as the woodworking side of things goes, what species of timber did you use and why?
All of the solid timber on the spiral stairs is spotted gum. As far as workability goes, spotted gum was not my first pick due to its hardness and aggressive grain but the architects were adamant on this species so we accepted the challenge.

In the Central Atrium blackbutt is used and again posed challenges due to its extreme hardness and weight. This was exaggerated due to the size of the profile that we needed to create, the complex geometry that was specified and the amount of accuracy required to achieve a flush finish with the wall below.

What are the main difficulties of work like this? Do things ever go wrong?
The main difficulties with highly customised work is determining the option that will work best for the exact situation. There are many different aspects to take into consideration, along with the minimal amount of tolerance that each of those things have. Yes, things go wrong, but we quickly learnt how to pick ourselves up and adapt to each problem we faced.

An overhead view of one of the new spiral staircases at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.

What part of the woodworking aspect do you enjoy most? Design, measuring, planning, layout, wood prep, shaping?
My favourite parts of woodworking are planning how we will construct and execute each individual project. I think that is what draws me to this sort of custom work, because every single job has its own portion of planning and designing stage.

I also really enjoy building these extremely challenging custom pieces using my great-grandfather’s hand tools. None of our work displayed at the Australian War Memorial was produced with CNC Technology. All of the timber works throughout the spiral staircases and Central Atrium were cut and shaped with bandsaw, routers and hand shaping tools.

How has the work been received?
We have received great reviews from Kane Construction due to our extreme commitment to quality and meeting deadlines. We also received a lot of praise from other tradesmen on the site as we were completing out works, along with plenty of positive comments from people who work at the Australian War Memorial.

What was the best part of the project for you on a personal level?
The best part of the project for me was seeing my company grow from just me in the workshop to five of us working together and sharing the load to complete such a big job.

We accepted a massive challenge and succeeded. By completing the project within the timeframe allocated we now know what our team can accomplish and are looking forward to the next big project.

Photos: Billy Medved (BM Images)

Learn more about Ned Oreskovic at Instagram @details_by_ned