Simple design to keep weight down and not compromise strength.

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so I decided to build my own mass steps

and there are two reasons primarily

although you see us that about in the

Solent both Dave and I do a lot of solo

sailing sometimes quite some distances

and when you're solo and you get a

problem aloft it's actually quite

difficult to do anything about it

and so for ease of getting aloft

scampering up some steps with a safety

line I thought it was a good idea and

the second reason is that I never

checked my rigging don't know whether

you're the same maybe once rarely twice

a year do I ever got and check my

rigging it's really gonna have somebody

winch you up it's sort of hard work and

inconvenient and so I thought to be able

to just simplify it I'm gonna check my

rigging more often an easy thing to do

before a long passage so for those two

reasons primarily I thought I'd build my

own you can buy them but I'm a bit of a

cheapskate and I bought a plate of 3

millimeter aluminium for 40 pounds less

and the cost of two steps to the

cheapest so I thought I'd give you a

little quick look at my design and the

manufacturing and my installation and

see what you think most my steps of this

type of made of 5 or 6 millimeter

aluminium and I needed a plate about 1

meter by half a meter square unless a

lot of weight and I was a bit reluctant

to put that much weight aloft so I went

for three millimeter the downside of

that is that three millimeters not so

strong when it can deform and so this is

my first iteration I rigged it up

screwed it to a post full weight on it

and as expected it did deform second

iteration I thought let's double the

thickness of the foot plate this one was

as solid as a rock but it looked pretty

ugly so that was no good

so the third and final iteration put

this strengthening bend in the footplate

and I'm really pleased with it solid as

a rock again no movement at all

see what you think so here are the

dimensions and the plan that I used

it started with me drawing this plan out

22 times on my sheet of 3 millimeter

aluminium following that it was a simple

job to use a jigsaw and to cut each one

out clean it up with a file I produced a

simple paper template for simplifying

the center punching

drilled three 6.3 millimeter holes

I applied a little bit of heat at least

on the 90-degree bends and simply laid

in there with a rubber mallet

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it produced one master and made sure

that every following step was a close

match

we'd have clean up with a needle file

and job done installing these is a job

for a younger man I think I got home

completely exhausted I climbed up and

hung there doing the work on a gris-gris

and then a cinder on two safety lines

marked the three holes with a pencil

drilled three pilot homes and then

drilled three 6.3 millimeter holes

I used six millimeter diameter 12

millimeter long pop rivets it was middle

of February unfortunately it was like a

summers day you certainly wouldn't want

to be doing this in bad weather I was

pretty pleased with the outcome every

one of them seemed to be in really solid

full-weight new deformation we shall see

how useful they are

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