welcome to the site, and honestly ist going to be hard top help you without some pictures of what all you have or don't

the treestand also sounds like its a VERY old one, they haven't used wood on ladderstands that I know of in about 20 yrs
so safety could be a issue here if the wood is dry or damaged at all, the reasons they stopped making them with wood was a safety reason!
and also, before you TEST the tree stand, you might want to tell us HOW heavy you are with all your hunting gear on, NOT all ladderstands can handle a lot of weight, and this OLD of stand would make me want to be sure about things before using
there are countless NEW treestands that are sold for about 40-50 bucks, NOT free , but if safety is at all a concern , I would say its worth the 40-50 bucks, as they say better safe than sorry!

also look at the welds real good!
welds on older stands can also fail as yrs pass!

so for use to better help you, pleas post some pictures of the things you have, lay them out and also measure how tall the ladder is, I will gather due to age its about a 12 ft one