The Ultimate Wooden Ladder Ball (Ladder Golf)Posted by Reece Walsh on May 29th, 2021 Welcome to The Every Maker my name is Nick and today we are playing Ladder, Ball. I’m, going to be using walnut for this project, because I got this for free. And it’s going to look really really nice.. I love this dark walnut in these outdoor lawn games.. I also used it when made lawn games for my wedding, so I’m just going to continue on with that and use this.. However, I did design the project to allow for 2 by 4s from the box store and with that you can stain it paint it do. Whatever you’d like to do., I have a little bit more work to do, because this is not dimensioned.. First things. First, we are going to build the arms of the ladder.. I cut the boards down to rough length and ripped the two bases I needed for each ladder.. I decided to make two ladders, which allows for more people to play at a time, but you can also play with just a single ladder.. I cut the uprights to rough width as I still needed to square up all of the boards.. I used a jointer to clean up and flatten the face of the board, then cleaned up the edge, giving a perfect square corner. With that square edge. I cut all the boards to their final dimensions, making sure the bases are the same width as the uprights.. I also squared up the ends and cut them to their final length.. In order to connect the uprights to the bases, I decided to create a half lap joint, something which I have never done. Before., A half lap joint is where you cut away half of the boards thickness on each piece allowing the boards to & quot Overlap. & quot, As with most things woodworking measuring is key. So I marked my first line from the front of the board, but then used the upright itself to get the right width.. Once I had my first cut lined up, I set up the stop block to make sure I could repeat the same cuts for all the bases. Then snuck up to my line. To make sure I had a perfect fit.. I repeated these same steps on the uprights.. The blade I have in my saw doesn & # 39 t, leave a smooth surface when doing cuts like these. So a little chisel work and I was able to get a pretty nice fit.. The rungs of the ladder are going to be slightly mortised into the arms so after carefully marking all the center points, I mark those points with a center punch. So that way I & # 39 d, have a good spot to reference. When I start drilling., I start the hole with a forstner bit.. I follow that up with a bit slightly larger than the hanger bolts. I will be using and drill all the way through.. I inserted the upright into the base to drill the final hole through both pieces. Making sure they were nice and snug.. Then it was on to sanding. Note to self make something to organize the sandpaper.. I paid special attention to where the two pieces meet making sure they were sanded, nice and flush.. All of the rungs all had to be cut to exactly the same length.. I had previously made these little blocks for another project and they’ve proven themselves to be dead. Useful in so many things. In this case, I clamped it to my crosscut sled to make a slightly extended, stop block.. Then I used it as a gap filler between the dowel and the stop block, so that when I cut the end dowel piece, I didn’t have that little piece floating there between the stop block and the blade of the saw - and there are a ton of these Things to cut. So now that I have all the dowels cut, I have to figure out how to drill a hole right down the middle of the dowel and have it be perfectly centered and perfectly straight.. Otherwise, it will not fit into the holes that I drilled for the legs, so I built a jig. And the first jig was to mark the center point on the ends of all the dowels.. Once again, I used my little block this time clamped to a speed square, so I could get the exact center of the dowel.. The second jig I used the same forstner bit as earlier to drill a hole halfway through the wood and a standard bit to finish off the hole that was just smaller than the hanger bolts.. I clamped it once again to those the little blocks level. With my drill and clamped that whole assembly to the bench. Pushed in a dowel, and it gave a pretty straight and centered hole. In order to screw the hanger bolts into the end of the down, I took two nuts and jammed them onto the bolt tightening them Into each other so that they would not move., This gave me a bolt head that I could use a wrench to screw them into the ends of the dowels.. All of the end caps got a hole, drilled, just slightly smaller than the nut., And once again I used the little blocks as a stop block.. I didn’t epoxy the nuts into the end caps because I wanted to make sure they sat flush and square with the arms. They do hold, but a small amount of epoxy would help make sure the nuts never fall. Out. And it’s eveyrone’s favorite time again. Yep more sanding., I used an extra hanger bolt with a nut on it, which fit nicely into the drill, so I could jam those end caps onto that and sand them using the drill which was WAY faster than trying to hand sand all of those little things.. I chose danish oil as my finish on this, because it’s easy to apply and it’s just as easy to re-apply.. I also like the natural wood feel the finish leaves. And I absolutely love the way it brings out the walnut.. Now that the ladders are done. It’S time to make the bolas. Now those are typically made with golf balls, but I didn’t really have any and I didn’t want to use them. I wanted to use wood because that’s what this project is all about., So I got some wood balls and some rope. Often bolas are made by drilling a hole all the way through the ball and tying off the rope.. I wanted to make a little bit cleaner. Looking set so I only drilled halfway through and I’m, going to use, epoxy to hold the rope in place.. Normally a set of ladderball comes with 2 sets of 3 bolas., Well I’m kind of paranoid that someones going to throw one of the bolas a little bit too hard and it’s going to land on the concrete and the wood ball is going to split in half And I’m going to be short one., So I made an extra one for each set.. staging your home made 4 sets just because I want more people to be able to play at a time. After cutting the rope I burned the ends to make sure the ends don’t fray., And I also put them into the holes that I drilled to make sure they Still fit. A little bit of epoxy onto the rope and into the the hole and just let it dry. And now for the final assembly. Not all the bolts ended up exactly perfectly straight with the rungs of the ladder, but it still went together really easily.. Now this project was a ton of fun to build and it is a ton of fun to play.. I built this as part of the makerscare.org event. Make time 4 play raising money for the Children & # 39 s. Miracle Network.! If you guys want to build a one of your very own, I will have plans linked down below in the doobly-doo as soon as I get those plans finished.. If you guys like what I do, go down below and hit that like button to. Let me know what you thought and if you have some feedback for me, leave me a comment as well.. If you want to see future projects and see what The Every Maker is all about hit that subscribe button - and I will see you guys again - real soon -Like it? Share it! |