Another Staircase Update

A suggestion from a colleague at work (thanks Richard W) helped me to decide which approach to use for the wall fixings. His suggestion was to take some 20mm dowel, and drill a 12mm hole down the middle. With the staircase in position, use a 20mm wood bit through the string, then 20mm masonry into the wall. Slide the rawlbolt through the whole thing, slip on the drilled dowel and tighten the whole thing up.

Being a wood turner who hasn't done any wood turning for a while, my Dad was keen on this idea, so he sparked up his machine and make some heavy duty dowels out of some square section beech that he had in his workshop :


One of my favourite tools from the garage was then wheeled out again in order to do the fine tuning of the levels. A scissors jack from a long-gone car (Triumph 1300 FWD I think) :

Getting the rawlbolt to catch in the celcon block, and wedge the arms apart was not easy. These blocks are very smooth when drilled, and the bolts don't have any form of barb to stop them pulling out. I think most of them probably pulled to the front of the hole, at which point the dowel stopped them moving any further. Maybe a 19mm masonry drill would have been sufficient. Anyway, before long, the first bolt was in :

You can see a bit more detail of the construction of the staircase here. Note the traditional wedges used to hold the stair treads in the housings cut in the strings. If the stairs start creaking you just (!) need to tap the wedges in a little tighter.

Before long, several more bolts were in position and we had that "look, no hands" moment :

Now I just need to figure out how to attach the top end !