Ladders are one of the most crucial things in daily life. The ladder is employed to climb small heights easily. There are many types of ladders available in the Indian market for different sorts of uses. The rope ladder is one of the types of ladders.
Rope ladders are liable at those places where you cannot take a simple metal ladder because of the remote conditions of that places. Rope ladders come with some advantages as they have more height limits than ordinary metal ladders, it is easy to transport and less heavy than other classes of ladders. Climbing on the rope ladder is not easy as it seems, but you may have to practice climbing on the rope ladders to climb softly on it. Rope ladders are habitually used by the ships at the dockyards, helicopters on mountains, and at home.
Making a rope ladder is an easy process. You can easily make a rope ladder at home for daily and occasional uses. It seems like a hard task of making reliable knots between the pieces of bamboos, but it is not as difficult as it seems. Here are the steps are discussed to prepare a rope ladder –
1. The ropes
To make a rope ladder, you need two strong ropes of the same length or cut a single long rope into two of the same length. The standard size of a rope ladder is 10 to 15 feet, its size might vary as the requirements of the user.
But it is important to cut two ropes of the same length. It is also a major part of preparing a rope ladder, to choose the type of material for the rope. There are many types of ropes available in the market, like cotton rope, jute rope, leaded poly-steel rope, nylon rope polyester rope, and polyethene rope.
Nylon rope is one of the best choices for preparing a rope ladder because this is water-resistant, heat-resistant, electrically resistant, vigorous compared to others, lightweight, and cheap. Nylon ropes have many other advantages. That makes them the perfect choice for the works, where the strength of the rope is required.
2. Rungs
Now is the time to choosing the second major part of the ladder that is bars that form the stepladder. It is essential to pick a rung that is strong enough to take 150 kgs to weigh on it. So this is the question, which material we should choose for our rope ladder.
Many types of strong, cheap, and excellent materials are available easily they are aluminium, stainless steel, iron, timber wood, and fibreglass. Carbon fibre can also be used in this process, but it is a little bit more costly than others but provides extremely lightweight bars for the ladders.
Now, it’s time to cut the material for making bars of the ladder, if you know that how to cut wood or metal then cut them yourself but it is suggested that you should cut it from the nearby shop of the carpenter. Cut the planks into a standard size of between 300mm to 400mm. it is important to cut the bars in the same size, all bars must be perfectly the same. Now is the time to assemble the rope ladder.
3. Assembling of the rope ladder
Assembling the rope ladder is a major part of making a rope ladder. This step decides that your rope ladder will work correctly or not. So, be wise when working with this step. There are two methods for assembling the rope ladder; by ‘marlin spike hitch method’ or by ‘ drill- knot method.
- Marlinspike hitch method – This is the method of rope ladder assembling, in which we prepare the ladder by knotting the rungs with the rope using a marlinespike hitch. This type of knot is easy to make and very strong along with giving extra grip to the bars with the rope. This is the most popular and easiest method of making a rope ladder. This method is very easy compared to the drilling method, where drills are required. There are three ways to tying the marlinespike hitch.
- The first way of tying a marlinespike hitch is to use some sort of a tool to do it. You can use a modelling spike or just some source of an object onto which we are going to attach the moorlands. We start by placing our tool over the rope, we hook our rope at the bottom, then we hook our rope at the top, now you have to pull the top part into the loop to create our marlinespike hitch. At this point, we can hold our tool to tighten up the rope. Once you get used to this method, it can be done very fast.
- The second way of making this hitch is to tie it like you would make a knot, so we will start by forming a loop. Then you have to feel the loop with the help of a loop that is straight. Then pass the bar into the second loop formed by the passing rope and now pull the rope to tighten the knot. Now you get the marlinespike hitch. We can also use slip-knot instead of this method, but it is not perfectly secure, so always use a marlinespike hitch.
- The last way of making this hitch is one of the best methods amongst others. Take your object onto which you were going to place your hitch. Place the bar under the rope, then take the rope and wrap it around, so we have our working and coming head toward the outside object. Now take this part next to the rope, so the back part of your working end will enter the front part. Now pull the standing rope around the object and tighten it.
This method is more complex than the marlinespike hitch method but more secure and safe than that method. This method is complicated only because you have to drill the bars and pass out the rope from the holes and then place the knot to fix the rungs in their place. This method is safer because there are not any chances of displacing the bars from the rope.
Now, fix all the bars in the rope by making a 300mm distance between each bar. Use any one of the methods listed above for making a rope ladder.
4. Testing of the rope ladder
Now is the must step is coming in the process of making a rope ladder. In this step, you have to test your ladder by different tests. Strength test, by placing a little bit more weight than the capacity of the bars. If the bars are not broken after this test then we can use this rope ladder after some little tests. they are folding and unfolding tests of the rope ladder. This test is also important because if the ladder does not unfold at the time of requirement then it is unusual for anyone. After passing all the tests the rope ladder is ready to use.
Bottom Line
After learning about all the possible types, it will be easier for anyone to prepare a ladder out of rope and few instruments with ease. We hope that you have a great experience making ladders at home.