Loft ladder

Following the excursion to the roof space noticed at reference 1, a spot of DIY was called for. Get on with it before the tread comes off altogether, with me on it.

The loft ladder is made in three sections. The idea is that they slide together into a neat pack and pivot up into the roof space when not in use. Swing them down and open them out again when you do want to  use them. All very convenient, and they have served well for thirty years, lightweight rivetted aluminium construction notwithstanding. A couple of the rivets can be seen in the snap above: very low profile on the outer surface to allow the ladder segments to slide together.

Then in the course of the insulation operation, the rivet above the fox snapped, leaving one of the four corners of the tread unsupported. Not very clever: one could take care with where one put one's feet, but it was only a matter of time before the next rivet snapped and there was some kind of accident.

Given that I couldn't replace the rivet with a regular bolt which would stand too proud, a hard wood insert seemed to be the answer.

So make a paper template for the insert. In two pieces, stuck together with my trusty glue stick.

Then take a thick piece of old oak from north London and use the template to cut it to shape. An operation which, given that this old oak was hard, involved me sharpening my jack plane, something I have not done for some months. Good enough for white wood, but not for oak. And rather to my surprise, the thing fitted first time. Not perfect, but for me, pretty good.

I settled for just one fixing, from above. Too fiddly to do the one from below as well. To find that the dome head screw I tried first time, what I used to call black japanned, stuck about two thirds of the way in. I could have tried oiling it, but I settled for a slightly different screw, not dome head, but at least not countersunk. Which last would have looked a bit tatty. 

Tread now feels pretty solid. And the insert, being old, is unlikely to shrink much.

All of which reminded me how much longer it takes to do little jobs of this sort when one is without the luxury of a workshop. All that getting out and putting away. Also how many tools one uses: I dare I could have managed without most of them - but it is a lot more satisfactory not to have to.

PS: wood engraving of a fox by Agnes Miller Parker visible behind the ladder. Hung up using mackerel line, bought from somewhere on the Norfolk coast, when I was going through a dustbin bag kite phase. Very impressive how high such kites can fly and how quickly they go up. Wood engraving from the days when the city folk who bought this sort of thing thought that foxes were cuddly. Furthermore, until I checked with Wikipedia, I had not realised what a long life she had. Then asking the laptop for images, there seemed to be a lot more animals than people, and the curious image above was turned up by both Bing and Google.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/09/roof-insulation-first-round.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_Miller_Parker.