A wooden ladder will surely be useful in a household and in the country. It is quite easy to assemble the structure with your own hands – you only need to comply with the basic safety requirements.
What should you make a ladder from?
Inexpensive but durable and wear-resistant material will be perfect for cottages and country houses. The outposts with your own hands are often made from conifers – for example, pine.
Simple wooden ladder can be made according to a photo or another model, but the calculations should be carried out taking into account the recommended settings.
You should choose equal bars and logs for a ladder, without knots, visible cracks and obvious distortions; a section of 40*50 mm is suitable for a cloth to 3 m, 40*80 – above 3 m.
Prior to assembly, all surfaces of the logs or veneer should be treated with a special antiseptic; it is much easier and cheaper to do it with your own hands than to buy ready-soaked boards (the impregnation is not noticeable in the catalog, but it will definitely affect the price).
High-quality treatment with antiseptic substances will allow wooden ladders to serve faithfully for several decades. Moisture and cold will not lead to deformation of the structure and its individual parts.
How can you assemble a reliable design?
It is important to carry out the installation of a ladder with your own hands after exact measurements and calculations; the availability of photo is insufficient.
Assembly recommendations:
- Recommended height – up to 5 m.
- A rubber “boot” or a nozzle as a secondary focus will make a ladder more resistant; removable hooks to the top – a convenient and functional item, which will facilitate work on garden plots.
You can choose pads of different shapes for different soils (pointed, flat, “skids”).
- Convenient step length – from 30 cm to 35 cm; section of each individual stage should be not less than 2 * 4 cm.
- All steps should be mounted in the grooves in the bowstring, and not leave them outside.
- Special tie bolts are suitable for fixing much better than ordinary nails. The spacing of bolts should not be more than 2 m.
The finished staircase or its individual parts should not be chipped, cracked or have other deformities.
The presence of such defects automatically makes the design unreliable – shaky and unstable.
Design calculation and assembly
If you assemble a ladder, you should pick up the appropriate materials (logs), so they can withstand the load and will not suffer from the influence of external factors. Practicality has to take precedence over aesthetics: usual ladder constructions can be made almost of all types of surfaces, down to plywood, but access ladders should be made of bars from a particularly resistant species of wood.
Having defined the desired future height of the ladder, you can proceed to finish its load-bearing elements – stringers or supports. The cross section of the logs and timbers are selected based on the following relations: if you have a wooden ladder up to 3 meters, the cross-section must be at least 4×5 cm, if it is 4-5-meter – then the cross-section will be 4×8 cm. When you choose a timber, you should take into account that you have to get rid of boughs, so it’s best not to add some extra work.
Ready-made supports should be knocked down so that the bottom would be slightly wider than the top. The optimal distance will be 30 and 40 cm, respectively. When you cement the strings of temporary plywood strips, you can start making other elements.
The choice of bars for crossbeams occurs on the same principle as for the bowstrings – it is better to exclude risers and twigs. As for the sizes, cross sections of 3×4,3, 5×4 or 4×4 cm will be more than enough.
Details fit
When assembling the structure with your own hands, it is important to make the ladder as comfortable as possible. The steps should have a distance of 25-30 cm from each other, after making marks on the supports (not only marks, but also numbers). The grooves are made for connection of the stringers. The end of each beam-step is formed by a tenon with length of 4-5 cm and section of 2×3 cm
It is necessary to prepare metal studs to ensure the reliability of the future design. The number of ties is calculated based on the height of the ladder (look at the photo-sample), but not less than 1 for every 2 m, except those ones which are located under the extreme steps.
It is important not to forget about competent processing of materials. Places of joints of wooden and metal details shall be processed by drying oil. Ready-made beams or logs are recommended to be covered with a transparent varnish, but it is undesirable to paint such structures: paints and colored varnishes go outdoors very quickly (for example, as in the photo on the right). If you have no desire to paint the inventory, you can simply upholster it with plywood.
Your advice and recommendations will help everyone to collect a ladder made of wood with your own hands. Reviews about the article will make the material more complete and informative!
