Building wood ladders or steps

[Johnny Mike]

I found an easy way to build wood latter's and steps is to take pre cut wood grating and glue it in the configuration of

the size you want then cut it into individual latter's, sand edges and cut to length.

[Fritzlindsay]

Hello Mike

Thank you for sharing your idea.   Weren't the ladders laid down at an angle rather than straight up and down and wouldn't they rest on the deck planks rather than having the ladder side rails hanging some inches in space above the deck?    

Fritz

 

[paul ron]

i think he put those in temporarily... the top step should be below the decking above by the same step height as a rung. 

 

i do have a ladder question that has always puzzeled me... if you were climbing a ladder of this type on a real ship... would there be hand rails or at least something to hold on to when going up or down on the top steps? it would be awfully dangerous, especially on a rocking n rolling ship at sea. 

 

[Gregory]

I’ve seen them on contemporary models without hand rails.  I assume they held on to the sides or the back of the rungs as needed.

These are men who had no problem scrambling around in the rigging on a rolling ship.

[paul ron]

but the top steps seem to be the problem i cant reason in my head... you are hands free at that point.

 

i guess you get the hang of it after that first broken nose or first time washed over board in a storm.

Edited 23 hours ago by paul ron

[wefalck]

Once you were washed over board, you didn't care about anything anymore, that was the end of it ...

 

Talking about negotiating stairs, which were always inclined by definition, on a ship you do this always backwards when going down, so you can hold onto the sides and your centre of gravity is over the stairs. So, no need for hand-rails.

 

Edited 21 hours ago by wefalck

[popeye2sea]

For vertical ladders, if you mount the ladder so that it is off of the bulkhead with spacers, the rungs and sides become handholds.

 

For inclined ladders, I have never once, in 24 years of naval service, gone down an inclined ladder backwards. That is a sure sign of a landlubber aboard ship.  Vertical ladders, can only be traversed facing the ladder.

 

BTW, ships do not have stairs. They have ladders.

 

Regards,

Henry

[wefalck]

Well, I was told so by my grandfather, who was in the German Imperial Navy.

 

And my 1920s textbook on ship’s joinery clearly distinguishes stairs and ladders.

[Chuck Seiler]

35 minutes ago, popeye2sea said:

the rungs and sides become handholds.

Never use rungs, steps, ratlines or horizontals on boarding nets as handholds.  Its a good way to get your hand stepped on.

 

[CDR_Ret]

1 hour ago, popeye2sea said:

For inclined ladders, I have never once, in 24 years of naval service, gone down an inclined ladder backwards.

On submarines, we always slid down the main stairs between decks on the handrails with hands only. You controlled your speed with your grip. I even saw our COs do this on occasion! For vertical ladders, there were always hand grips positioned somewhere above the top rung to help the transition between ladder and the deck.

[Dziadeczek]

I follow the method described once by Fr. Bill Romero.

First prepare yourself the sides of your ladder, then prepare the steps. Assemble temporarily the sides like it's shown on the pic, in the shape of a letter "A" (at an angle that is twice the angle between your ladder and the side of your model), placing a drop of white glue at the tops of the sides. Place drops of glue at the bottoms of the sides and temporarily glue them to the horizontal piece, shown here as "scrap wood". Place your 'triangle' on the table of your miniature table saw (Preac, Proxxon, or like), the side with "scrap wood" facing the fence of your saw and make slits in the sides to the depth equaled half the thickness of your sides. Use an appropriate spacer to make subsequent slits to make sure your slits are equally distanced to each other.

Now disassemble the sides from "scrap wood" and from each other.

Glue all steps into the slits in one side of your ladder and after the glue dries, glue them to the other side.

 

Alternatively, instead of cutting slits in the sides, glue to them equal size 'rhombs' (parallelograms) of the same piece of wood as your sides, making sure you keep spaces for your sides to be glued in later on. - drawing A.

(Don't mind the numbers on the scan - they refer to his model only).

Edited 7 hours ago by Dziadeczek

[Gregory]

6 hours ago, wefalck said:

on a ship you do this always backwards

What are you calling "backwards"? 

Facing the ladder or back to the ladder?

[Dr PR]

Gregory,

 

Thanks for the obvious question!

 

I don't know about the forward or backwards spin, but I always went up the (inclined) ladders facing them, and down with my back to the steps.

 

External (outside, weather deck) ladders usually had hand rails that continued up to the tops of life rails or life lines around the decks. Internal ladders had nothing like this. At the top there were no handholds.  When you climbed them you just stepped out onto the deck, just like climbing stairs in a building.

 

However, in heavy seas when the ship was pitching heavily over large swells, navigating internal ladders could be challenging. I can remember more than once when I was climbing a ladder in typhoons when the ship dropped out from under me, leaving me floating weightless in the air. But not for long before the deck came up to slam me! With experience you lose your lubber's legs and learn to get along no matter how the ship is pitching and rolling.

Edited 12 hours ago by Dr PR