Not Completely Abandoned . . .

While trying to organise the rest of my life there are still a few little jobs which need to be attended to; the end caps for the tail-light bar seemed like a good place to start. . .
Fortunately there were a couple of pieces of my favourite acetal in the rack.
First step was to machine a "plug" to fit inside the end of the tube.
You can see video of the machining here.












then machine off the excess to match the outside of the tube
You can see a video of the machining here.













and finally round over the edge (just to be neat)
You can see a video of he machining here.













Turned out rather nicely I think
















Despite being a nice "tap" fit into the tube I couldn't resist adding a stainless steel screw to make sure it would stay there.





















I had noticed before that the step treads were starting to crack. They were cannibalised from a very cheap ladder and are made of sheet metal about 1mm thick, not a good prognosis for longevity so some repair work was in order.























At each hinge point the (surprise) powder coating was ground off

















and a washer the correct size tacked in place


















then fully welded (it's like trying to weld brown paper on that 1mm sheet metal)
















and ground flat again.


















This will be primed and repainted along with the rest of the steps and hopefully wont even be noticed, apart from the reduced likelihood of pitching me into a severe injury!