Building Ladders (Tutorial)

My latest build will be requiring four or more ladders of various heights.  Rather than buying them, I've been experimenting with multiple ways of building them instead.  Last weekend I trialled a new method using wire mesh that worked pretty well, however, the resulting ladders looked a little too rough for my tastes.  So today I tried a different approach and think I've got it licked.

I used this method to make three ladders today.  The first two I prepared together and used the same technique for the ladder rungs, and I tried a slightly different approach for the third.  How long does it take?  I made my third ladder in around 5 minutes, so it's far from time-consuming.  I dare say that with a little practice and some templates, they'd be the type of thing I could pump out on-demand while looking consistent/regular, without much difficulty whatsoever.

What's required: Nails for the ladder's rungs, a pair of pliers that can snip nails (so they need to be pretty strong), a craft knife, paddlepop/icecream sticks, something to drill holes into the sticks, a pencil or marker and superglue.  I also used a tool to push little guide holes into the wood, but one of the nails would also do the trick.

Draw a line along the centre of each paddlepop stick - you're going to cut them in half, length-ways.
Then draw regularly placed lines along the width of the stick.  You'll need to work out what the best spacing is, I've made mine pretty close, less than a centimetre apart.  On those lines, push an indentation into the wood - it makes the drilling that little bit easier to get right.  You'll end with something like this:

I've got two sticks stacked and held down with some clamps onto a thin piece of wood.
Using the wood means I don't have to worry about damaging the surface below, mind you, I'm not
too concerned about my workbench.  The clamps just keep both pieces aligned while I drill.

Then it's time for drilling.  It's merely a case of selecting a drill bit that's the same diameter as the nail.  It takes all of a minute to do.

I used my Dremel for these two sticks but used a regular battery hand drill for the next.

Using your craft knife, slice the stick into two halves.  I was making two ladders first up, so I've got four halves in the following picture.

Next to prepare the rungs.  I have a box of old nails of various sizes, so I just choose a dozen of the same gauge, just a little longer than I wanted the ladder wide.  Why?  Because you've got to (at least) tail them, i.e. take off the spike.  The easiest way to do this is to use some pliers just be aware that they don't result in a beautiful, 90-degree cut - it's more like a pinch which leaves a little spike.  You could get all crazy and sand it down, use a saw or something, but I really don't think it is needed.  Make that call yourself.

Using a bit of posterboard stuff, I made a little gauge.  Using the gauge, I can drop nails in, then cut them off with my pliers at a consistent length - you can easily do a ladder's worth in a minute.  A note of warning: when snipping the nail's tail, it will shoot off!  I wear glasses (luckily), and if I wasn't, I'd likely have had a trip to Emergency.   Wear some eye protection!!

Pretty simple: I just line my plyers up and take the tops off.
I stuck it to another paddlepop stick and put it in my useful box for another day!

Now it's time to thread the nails into the holes.  Notice I did every second hole?  That's so I have the nail heads on both sides of the ladder.  Yeah, not entirely realistic, but either 3-metre tall chainsword wielding spacemen.

Push the two halves together, even up the ends with your craft knife, run some superglue along each side, locking the nails in place and you're done!  Here's what it looks like with a bit of black undercoat.

Once I tried these ladders out on my latest build, I realised I made them a little too short.  So I made a third ladder but only trimmed a little bit off the ends of the stick instead, resulting in a more extended ladder. Also, for the third ladder, I topped-and-tailed the nails: they're the same length overall (so the ladder's the same width) but I just took both the point and head off the nail.  BTW these particular nails had some little lines etched in them which may make for some extra detail come painting. I was just a little more careful when assembling it at the end and used a bit of extra glue to be sure.  The result is that yellow ladder pictured at the beginning of the post.  It doesn't have the cool rivets on the sides, but maybe looks better for it?

So I'll paint the ladders up properly over the next few weeks as I am finishing my truck-come-power station, probably using a silver or bronze craft paint over the black and a sepia wash before sealing with a mat or semi-gloss varnish.

Do let me know if you give this method a try yourself or if you have any good ideas to improve things some more.