Fixed wooden ladders can be pretty handy they can really smarten up a set of
bunks or help you get to a mezzanine bed I'll show you how to build a nice and
solid one yourself. Now the great thing about this project we only need a couple
of items to put it all together. Our sides, some rungs, a couple of screws and
some glue. Before you get into it make sure you are building the ladder to suit
your needs. But as a rule of thumb, your ladder
should be no more than 600 millimeters wide and your rung should be at least 32
millimeters thick. Now the first thing I'm gonna do is cut my sides to length so
I'm making my ladder 2.2 overall now I'm going to put a slight angle on one end
just to sort of give it a little bit of form. So the next thing I'm going to do
is mark out for our rungs and I'm going to space our runs at 250 mil to
the center so coming off the bottom which I've lift nice and square, just gonna
to mark 250, 500, 750, a metre, 1250, 15 hundy, 1750, 2 metres. Ok so the next thing
I need to do is just square those marks around all four sides of our pieces of
timber. Now as you're doing this it's really important that you have a really
nice sharp pencil. If you've got a blunt pencil it's not gonna give you a nice
sharp line and it could put all your measurements out. I'm now just going to
set my combination square to 35 millimeters. I got a 90 ml wide piece of
timber I'm not going to set these rungs in the center of them I'm just going to
have them slightly forward a little bit more. We are going to put a foot on the
back, the reason I'm going to put these rungs just a little bit more further
forward it just gives me a little bit more scope when you're standing on the
rungs that your foot is a little bit further off the wall so I'm just setting
that to 35 mil and then I'm just gonna mark where it hits our rung line and
I'll do that on both sides of the timber. So the next thing I need to do is cut
my dowel. Now I've got eight rungs, I need to chop eight lengths of this, now the
overall width of my ladder is 500 millimetres now I'm going to allow the
dowel to penetrate past the side of my ladder 10 millimetres so that's
520 mil I'm going to cut these, that way when the letter is all
nice and dry I can cut the excess off.
The next thing I have to do is drill all the way through now I'm using a 35mm dowel,
so what I'm going to use is a 35 mil forstner drill bit, these are really
nice and sharp it's going to give me a really good accurate cut. So what I'm
gonna do is drill halfway through, flip it over and then carry on from the other
side. The reason I'm going to do that is because if I was to carry on drilling
all the way through from one side it's got to blow out the back and it's gonna
be pretty ugly. Now there's a couple of different ways we can go about this,
I can use my battery drill and keep that really nice and plumb or I can just use
a drill press like over here which I'm gonna use. I've screwed a piece of ply to
the base of my drill press and just put a little back guard on there, so all I need
to do is slide my side through and just drill on my marks. Now I'm just gonna
go halfway through, flip it over, and then do the same on the other side.
So the next thing I need to do is cut a slot in the end of my piece of timber
like I've done here. Now the reason for that is once my dowel goes through the
side of my ladder, I'm gonna put a wedge into that slot and
then so what's going to happen as that dowel is gonna slightly spread and the
wedge in there is going to hold that dowel into the side of the ladder really
nice and tight without that the glues just gonna sit in there and that could
eventually force out. Now there's a couple of different ways you can
actually cut this, now I'm going against the grain, as you can see the grain is
going sideways that way. I'm gonna put this straight up and down perpendicular
to that line the reason for that, when my wedge goes in it's got to stand out a
lot more as if I was going with the grain. Now the next thing I'm going to do
is mark 30 millimetres back from that line just to make sure when I actually
cut through I'm not going to come any further. The reason for that is the width
of my side of my ladder is 30 millimetres and I'm sticking out 10 so
what that allows is the wedge to go in 25 mil.
Sweet. Now just do the same for all the rest.
So, I'm going to make my wedge 90 millimetres long by about 12 millimetres
wide, so not too fat quite nice and sharp. So I'm just going to sit that nice and
square across the back of my table and I'm just going to pull that around till
it's approximately on that angle.
Next thing we need to do is put some PVA glue inside our holes and then we're
going to insert our rung.
Now I just want this to protrude through
10 millimetres. Okay, so that's pretty good so now all I have to do is exactly the
same for all the rest.
Okay that's lovely. Now if you're really worried about
making sure all these slots line up you can do so but I'm not too worried I kind
of like it, they're a little bit random that they're not all in a nice straight line.
Now I've just thrown some 10 mil
packers underneath so that just sits on the table quite nicely. Next thing I need to
do is take a square and just make sure that my dowels are all sitting nice and square.
They're all looking pretty good that could go
over a millimeter.
Excellent. Right, next thing we're gonna do, take some sandpaper and
I'm just going to sand up the edges of the top of the dowel just so when I
put my other side on it's not gonna catch on any little daggy bits.
The next thing I'm gonna do, is take a couple of packers and I'm gonna clamp them to our
rungs now the over all of my ladder is 500 millimetres the thickness of my
sides is 35 mil so if I take 570 mil the difference of that is 430, so I've cut
these packers 430 mil and all I'm gonna do is just clamp that temporarily
to my rung, so when I put my other side in I know exactly the height to go to.
Primo, now all I have to do is glue up the other side like I did the first, just
slip that over. I've just apply glue to every hole now all we're going to do is
roll it on to the rungs. Now there's no great easy way to do this you just have
to line up each rung and tap away gently.
Hammer this side on until the rungs protrude ten millimeters just like the
other side. Now apply a liberal amount of glue, just force that into your slot,
do that on all of them and then we'll insert our wedge.
Now you just wanna insert that wedge really nice and tight, pretty much till the wedge can't go any further.
Now as you're going, it's quite good to have a damp rag on hand just to clean up
any little bits of muck that goes onto your timber. When you're done do the same
for the other side. Now I've just let that sit overnight so I'm ready to cut these off.
Now a wee little tip when cutting these off, just put your saw approximately a mil or
half a mil off the edge of this and we could always sand that down flush if we
put our handsaw hard up against that we're going to get the teeth marks on
the side of our timber and that means it's just going to take longer to sand
it down later.
Now just repeat the same for the rest. And then give the sides a sand with
your belt sander until they're nice and flush. Okay I've just cut some blocks that I'm
gonna screw to the back of my ladder so just remember we did set our dowels to
the front of our ladder and we are going to fix these to the back. Now all I've
done is cut that 180 millimeters long and I've cut a 15 degree angle, you can
cut whatever angle you like, so I've pre-drilled a 3 mil hole in the
centre of that block. Now I've got 150 millimetre long bugle screw that I'm
going to put through the block into our piece of timber, so I've already got one
set up here. Now I've just protruded that bugle screw through about 2
millimetres. Now I'm just going to set that up in the middle between our two
rungs and all I'm going to do is use that screw to give myself a little mark.
So that's just left a little impression on the back of our ladder so we can go
through with our 3 mil drill bit and pre-drill a hole. So I'm just going to apply a little
bit of PVA to the back.
Just making sure they're nice and flush.
Lovely.
Wipe off any excess glue and when it's set, give the whole ladder a finer sand with
your orbital sander for a nice smooth finish.
You can then stain, varnish or paint to suit. If you're installing the ladder to
a set of bunks screw it in place from behind using coach screws. If you're
installing the ladder onto a wall then you'll need to use four heavy-duty
90 degree brackets and make sure you're fixing it to something solid.
If you're unsure how to fix it check with a licensed building practitioner.
All done.
There's your completed ladder. It looks pretty good and it was easy as.