Shopsmith Forums

I designed and fabbed a simple platform to safely access eaves. One end mounts to porch, other end stands on adjustable legs. The legs need to be readily/easily adjustable in height to accommodate a widely varying ground height - but stiff enough to not buckle, and the height adjustment must NOT slip. 3/4" dia wood dowel for the legs. Spindly, but they did not bend or buckle. For the "feet" I used chunks of 3X3 post. Counterbore the dowel into the post, and glue it. Otherwise the foot will fall off the dowel during platform re-location. Put down some concrete block-pads for the legs if working on soft ground. To get the leg height adjustment, I first used a screwdown clamp collar/sawcut design. Not good. clamp collars work well in steel but wood is too sloppy to work smoothly and hold securely, at least with my workmanship. So I abandoned the clamp collar and used channel-lock pliers (see pictures). They allow fast adjustment + a solid no-slip grab of the dowel. Should have designed with them first. The platform is screwed to the porch deck. Since my deck will soon be replaced, I don't care about about putting screw-holes in it, but I suppose I could patch the holes if I was not replacing the deck. It would be tempting to not screw the platform to the deck - but would not be safe. Those channel-locks have to be carefully set to GRAB onto those dowels under load - your load plus tools plus ladder. Otherwise you could take an unwanted ride down.

Re-locating this platform along the porch during the project is ideally a 2-person job. Every time the platform is moved, both channel-locks have to be slipped and then re-clamped, all while holding up the platform, so having 3 hands while re-locating is useful if doing this ones-self.

You must either really love Vise Grip pliers, or are really trusting or both...looks a bit too precarious for me.

Be careful...

Steve, if those dowels look spindly to your eyes, I'd recommend that you trust your eyes, not the dowels. They're trying to tell you something. Thin flexible columns are notoriously prone to buckling failures.


Should you care to wade through the engineering details, here's the Purdue lecture on column buckling from whence that illustration came.

Absent any engineering calculations, to my eyes you need at least 2x2 support columns to have a decent safety factor, and I'd personally be more comfortable with 2x4's.

I would be concerned with the crushing effect the vice grips have that will cause deterioration of the od. Also the vice grip jaws are intended to resist rotation, not sideways sliding.

Be careful!!!!



I think you need gutter guards.

How about using steel pipe and pipe-clamp hardware for the legs? That would give you much higher buckling strength. The pipe-clamp hardware would provide easy leg-length adjustment, and it's specifically designed to prevent longitudinal slippage along the pipe.

Steel pipe would have been much better. With steel tube or pipe, I could have used actual clamp collars.

The pliers do tear up the (soft) wood dowel (poplar? birch?). But I figure that increases the holding strength...

I wanted to use oak dowel but max std length for oak dowel is 36". I needed 48".

I could have coupled the legs together at midpoint with a sliding stretcher. That would have reduced their effective (buckling) length.

But I wanted something cheap and temporary, and 3/4" dowel was sufficient. I avoided jumping up and down on the platform...

Yes I need rain gutters. One project at a time...

What I thought of when I first saw this thread was why not drill holes through the supporting columns every 1" or so near the top? Then use a short piece of steel rod (8 penny nail if nothing else) to insert into these holes. Make some way to keep this captive and register against the bottom of the platform, i.e. a keyed recess to match the steel rod. With this, you could easily adjust the height up/down 1" at a time. With a level on the side of the platform, and perhaps needing a spotter for this, you could quickly adjust each side for height simply moving this pin in/out until desired height is attained. I agree with swapping it out for at least a 2x4 as I could imagine those dowels buckling, particularly without some means of cross bracing between them. Whether you keep what you've got, or modify a bit, please be careful. From the picture it looks like about a 12' minimum drop to the group down below depending on which way it lets go. Would be a nasty fall and don't want to see you hurt.

Is the grain absolutely 100% dead straight for the entire length of those dowels? Any short grain is going to make them even weaker. I vote 2x4

NO! Just, NO!

But hey, it's YOUR NECK! You do you…

BigKahunaFL wrote: Sat Aug 17, 2024 9:21 am NO! Just, NO!

But hey, it's YOUR NECK! You do you…

Agreed…. So many things wrong with it. At first I thought it was in done jest but….. (no offense meant)

OP, please video using it and post it on your channel