elmer fudd
Contributor
I like your idea about using the gas pipe ladder, I will have to explore that further... thanks...
It worked out extremely well. This may sound a bit redneck, but I took two 10' pipes, found a forked tree the right size, placed the pipes in the fork one at a time and bent them into large "U" shapes. Then I tweaked them until they were near perfect matches. I cut off the extra, threaded the long end and attached about 18" to the bottom with 90 degree elbows. After adding decking across that 18" this became the swim platform. The U shaped pipes are hand rails and like the decking, they bolt to the transom.
For the ladder, I used 1/2" pipe and standard elbows and T fittings. Here's the deal though, as anyone who has ever fitted pipe knows, you can't make a closed 360 degree loop using threaded fittings unless one of them is reverse threaded. What I did instead was to ream out the T fittings until they were an extremely tight fit over the unthreaded pipe. Then I heated them up with a torch and used a hammer to drive them into the correct place for the rungs. There's nothing holding them there but friction, but there's a whole lot of friction and they ain't moving. This has the added benefit of keeping the sides of the ladder as one continuous piece of pipe and helps keep things solid.
The ladder attaches to the swim platform with two large pins and it can be swung up and out of the way when not in use or removed entirely for days when I don't plan on diving.