Attic Stairs - Part 2

Another weekend and another few steps finished. I have got in to the habit of cutting out and rough fitting a few steps at the weekend. Since all parts need 3 coats of varnish I apply these in the evening after work over the course of the week. This way the next batch of steps is finished and ready for final fitting the following weekend.

There is a little bit of work is making the central column spacer for each step. Each step rise is 210mm. I am using 24mm furniture grade birch plywood for the steps which results in a column space height of 186mm. I make these columns out of a sandwich of 7 disks of 24mm plywood and a single 18mm disk.

I use an adjustable hole cutter to scribe a 130mm disk in the top few millimetres of the plywood and then cut out the disks with a jigsaw. I then glue and screw the disks together to make a column that is 186mm tall. I use a short piece of 20mm conduit to align the centre of all the disks.

With the rough column spacer mounted on my lathe I turn it to a smooth cylinder. It only take a few minutes with a roughing gouge to turn a 120mm cylinder. The final few millimetres are removed with a scraper. While still mounted on the lathe I sand the part smooth before finishing with 3 coats varnish.