I’m putting up a rolling library ladder at home and I’m hoping that I can get some advice with building the ladder part.
I’ve already bought the ladder hardware kit from the guys at cshardware.com. They will sell you the wood to put your ladder together, but A) They want $350 for their cheapest wood kit and I already spent a lot on the metal hardware bits, and B) the shortest one that they sell is about a foot taller than what I need.
Fortunately, they have a relatively specific guide on how to make the ladder yourself. I’m going to go ahead and put the image here, and then I’ll ask my questions (and boy, I have a bunch of questions):
So, let’s start from the top. Any advice on what wood I should use? I’m leaning toward red oak because I believe it’s inexpensive and should work nicely where I’m wanting to put it.
Along those same lines, any advice on where I should purchase the wood?
My ladder is going to be 86" tall (the ladder rail is 81" high - or will be). I’m going to have 7 steps. Any advice on what size piece(s) I should go for? I can do the math and say, “Well, if I buy a chunk of wood that at least covers X area, that’ll be enough wood.” But I don’t know if, for convenience sake, I might be better off buying a couple of different commonly available sizes.
The drilling and the measuring I can handle. The simple straight cuts I can handle, but I absolutely welcome advice, because those are some really long cuts.
How do I get that bullnose edge, and how do I best create those notches for the steps to fit into?
Any tips on how to get that really nice curve at the very top of the ladder?
Will anyone with this sort of woodworking experience be around the 'Space this evening who might be up for chatting with me about planning and plotting this project out? I’m going to be over there around 5pm in the machine shop, so hopefully free around 5:30 and might be around fired arts for a while after that.
This is one of those efforts that I continue to look at and think, “Yeah, I can do that.” But there are all of these little details that I need to have figured out before I start going in and destroying really nice hardwood.
Do a dry run in something cheap like pine first…and for my money I’d do this on multicam knowing my propensity to notice things being 1mm off and tendency to make exactly that happen when I’m doing longer runs
In general though the edge is going to be done with some kind of router…cnc, hand, table…whatevs. I’d be using a hand router and a fence because like you said thats a looong cut to feed through a table. I’d also do the notches with a plunge router if the cam isn’t in your wheelhouse. For perfectly square corners you’ll be using a chisel either way.
That being said, my experience is largely scultptural and not furniture so defer to anything contradictory a real expert has to say.
86" long (or thereabouts) uprights is pretty long…there will be several challenges, e.g. ensuring dados that will receive the ladder steps are exactly even in height to their mate on opposite side. Easy conceptually, not so much in practice.
Not necessarily a recommendation but consider making the uprights in sections and joining them:
If you design correctly and interestingly this approach would probably enhance the look, and I believe it will certainly simplify the build/construction phase. I will be interested on others’ critical thoughts on this alternative…
One way to do this is to make one single upright that is twice as wide as you need it to be. Make all the dados in this one piece. Then rip it in half and you have matching dados.
Set up a jig with a router to make the dados. Shouldn’t be too bad. All you need to do is make the first one in the right spot then the jig would make the spacing easier & more important consistent.
Or find someone with a radial arm saw. Then put a dado blade in it.
The angled dadoes on the ladder rails are usually done on a table saw, but can be used on a racial arm saw as well. You’ll need to buy a a dado stack and adjust accordingly. Use an adjustable cross-cut miter gauge and adjust to proper angle. From there, remove the fence , clamp the stock to your gauge and go at it. I would use red oak, depending on the look you want.
The upper detail can easily be done by creating a template and tracing to the stock and using a jig saw to cut out. Finish off the edging with a round over router bit on the router table.
For added detail, you might try a through mortise-tenon with wedging for the steps. This would eliminate any hardware and can be done without dadoing. More handcrafting, but look really cool, especially if you use a darker wood double wedge locking system. Crap, now I’m thinking about this!
One more way to accomplish this, probably the easiest. You could use 1x stock and laminate the dado for the steps. So by using the miter saw, you’ll just need to get your angle then cut the inner laminate to create a dado for each step. This will create an 1-1/2" ladder rails. Round over the rails on the router table and you’ll create a very stable laddder.
I also used a miter saw with a spacer block. Set the stop depth to 1/8" then made all my cuts @ 12degrees obviously you have to slide the 12 degrees to opposite for the opposite rail. Make one rail with dadoes then lay your other right next to it measure off the first one
I needed a “library” ladder to access the top of my settlement chamber for my pond, it is almost identical to what you are trying to build. If you keep it simple, it is easy to make. I took two 8’ 2x4’s and two 48" 1.25" dowels to build it, about $20 from Lowes. But you can use nicer wood. I cut the dowels to 16" long and spaced the 12" apart and inserted them into 1" deep blind holes with wood glue on each upright. The bottom of the uprights is cut at 15 degrees. I thought about flat treadles like your plan and realized I would not be barefoot climbing this. It took about 30 minutes to make and is rock solid. I used two clips at the top to hook over the “basket”.
I am sure you want to have more aesthetic appeal to your design, but not using flat treads saves a lot of work.
Ooops, just saw this is an old post. Oh well, maybe someone else can benefit from it. (-:
