A photo of the completed cable rail on our staircase. We had a metal rail custom welded and powder coated in "antique penny" color. The posts were welded to the top section and a couple of T footings were bolted to the floor so the whole thing would slide into place and could be locked down with a screw in each T footing. That made it a lot easier to assemble and lock it down.
We sourced our cable railes from Ultratec sold by the Cable Connection. We used 3/16" stainless steel cable that had a "stud" swaged on one end (machine clamped on). The stud screws into a lock fitting that you can get of various lengths to fit through the rail post width you choose. At the other end, the cable has nothing on it and you cut it to length and put a self locking fitting on that end once it is in place in the rail post. Then you tighten the lock fitting with an allen key. It's a little tricky to do, especially trying to turn a cable 90 degrees in a post. You're not supposed to do that because it's really hard but Structural FX pulled it off. It looks really nice with the Hubbardton lights we chose around it and beige berber carpet.
