Ratcheting take-up device

A take-up device 1 includes a building frame tie-down rod 24 and a housing 26 with an outer bore 17 having a lower inward-curved portion that is frusto-spherical, a plurality of insert segments or collets 2 disposed in the outer bore and contained securely within the housing by the resilient packing 46, each of which has an outer bore-interfacing surface that interfaces with the inward-curved portion of the outer bore of the housing, the outer bore-interfacing surfaces of the plurality of insert segments collectively forming a segmented frusto-spherical surface where the outer bore-interfacing surfaces interface with the outer bore. Each insert segment has a concave inner bore-defining surface and the plurality of concave inner bore-defining surfaces form a generally tubular inner bore into which the rod 24 is inserted so that the rod can be moved up through the inner bore but is caught by the closing surfaces of the collets when it attempts to move back down through the bore, so that the rod is continuously kept under tension by this ratchet action as the wooden frame of the building shrinks and the building settles on the foundations.