Back in November (the 25th, to be exact), I got a little tired of this wobbly hand rail at the stairs to the staterooms. It was very wobbly, and because a boat is always in motion, it seemed like a good idea to figure out how to secure it.

It’s hard to tell from the photo, but the hand rail is screwed in through two holes in the handle itself, which were very nicely covered with a wooden dowel, sanded, and varnished. The only way to get to the screws was to drill out the dowels – a rather destructive process that will need to be remedied in the future.

Anyhow, I drilled them out and got to the screws… which were both very bent, which meant that somebody, at some point, leaned so hard against the rail that it bent the original brass screws down. In addition to causin the screws to bend, it also reamed the holes out enough to render any similarly sized screws useless. Fortunately, the boathouse we purchased came with a bunch of screws of all sizes, so I managed to find a pair that were the correct length, and slightly thicker. Perfect.

The hand rail is now secure, and at some point in the future, I’ll glue a set of dowels into it and do the whole “make it pretty” routine. In the meanwhile, it’s good enough to be functional!