Day 1 of making the ladder (by alaric)
This weekend, I am attempting to make a fixed ladder, mounted to the wall of my workshop so I can fix the roof more easily.
First, I had to tidy up in the workshop to make room. I bought a set of four folding chairs for guests which are rather in the way (the chairs, not necessarily the guests), So I screwed a few bits of scrap wood up between the beams to store them:
See all that damp on the ceiling, by the way? That is the enemy! Eradicating that is the long-term goal of this whole mission.
With the chairs out of the way, I could get on with the task at hand. Here's the bit of wall where the ladder will go:
And here's the pile of steel I ordered from Hindleys to make it from:
The ladder is being made mostly from 1" square steel tubing, which needs to be cut into bits of various lengths with my trusty angle grinder. Here's the rungs (longer parts) and the spacers that will join it to the wall:
However, for extra strength and extra not-having-a-sharp-corner-ness, at the bottom it will be joined to the wall by an angled spacer on each side. The spacer will be at forty-five degrees to the vertical (and to the horizontal, thanks to the magic of maths), so I need to cut twenty two and a half degree angles onto the bottoms of the ladder uprights, like so:
Also, I needed to cut out two spacers with twenty two and a half degree angles at one end (to mate with the uprights) and forty five degree angles at the ends which will mount onto the wall, bringing my pile of various lengths of steel tube up to this:
Where the tubes need to attach to the wall, I'm going to weld them to flat steel plates, which will be drilled for the bolts that join them to the wall. All of the tube ends I've cut will be welded, so the fact that they're rough angle-grinder cuts doesn't matter, but these edges will be exposed, so the fact that they are nasty and burred offends me:
But a quick run along the bench grinder each has given them nice clean edges:
Sarah turned up and took a picture of me, just as I was finishing. Check out my lovely protective clothing - I take my safety seriously when dealing with forces that can make metal flow like honey:
Finally, I measure out the layout of the angled spacer, to check I'd done my maths correctly to make it the right length to produce a 30cm spacing, to match the straight spacers, and that the angles were right:
Tomorrow, I will go out shopping to buy some anchor bolts to mount it to the wall (I can't drill the holes in the plates until I know the diameter required), welding magnets so I can make sure the angles are exact as I weld it together (I don't want a wonky ladder), and some metal paint so it won't rust when it's installed - then it's time to start welding. I plan to start by making the sides with the angled and straight spacers so I can check they align perfectly by placing them one on top of the other, before welding the rungs in between them.
Alaric, Building Maintenance, Metalworking | alaric | 
Sat 19th Jan 2013 10:54 pm
Subscribe