I recently received a call from a reader who had seen my September/October 2014 article on guardrail post kits and was trying to sort out how to attach posts to a 2×6 frame. His question was whether or not these post kits would work with 2×6 rather than 2×8 framing (the size framing used to build my test assembly), provided that similar blocking to the detail described in the article was used.
I told him that the only way to know for sure is to test the assembly, but that I saw no reason why you couldn’t use 2x6s, since the key is the blocking, and the only change would be the 2-inch height differential with the rear block. At worst, the rear block would have to be doubled to provide enough space for additional screws.
Mike Guertin
East Greenwich, R.I.