Thread: Ladders for Chelsea

Sub Title: But I'm a Woodturner, I don't do ladders!

A good friend of mine has a very successful landscaping design and construction business. Phillip Johnson Landscapes is the business, have a look at his website, he's doing some remarkable stuff www.phillipjohnson.com.au

He is doing so well that the company that organises the Aussie exhibit at the Chelsea Flower Show each year (Flemmings Nursery), asked Phil to do this year's design. Now Phil doesn't do anything by halves and the exhibit he has designed is going to blow all other exhibits out of the water.

Two features of his design are a 2m deep billabong and a 5 m high rock cliff. The billabong is designed for people to swim in so Phil thought it necessary to have a ladder that swimmers could climb to access the top of the cliff from where they could then jump back into the water. The problem was, however, the ladder needed to go from the bottom of the billabong to the top of the cliff and that added up to 7 metres.

Enter, Brendan Stemp who is not known for making long ladders (or FB ladders as I was calling it) but I had to help my good mate out and being a part of this exciting project was also enticing.

The result, see pics. Phil asked me to do a smaller ladder for another part of the exhibit and this one did require me to do some woodturning,

The rungs were turned from 30x 45mm blackwood, with the ends shaped and tapered into dowells that I could then glue into the sides of the ladder. I sanded the whole length on the lathe to soften the edges of the rungs. The sides of the ladder were made from a slab of blackwood I have had drying for a few years and I decided a nice feature would be to keep the natural edge and sap wood.Chelsea FB Ladder 1.jpgChelsea FB Ladder 2.jpgSmall Ladder.jpgSmall Ladder detail.jpg

So that's what has been keeping me busy. And for those who are wondering, yes it was problematic getting a 7m long ladder vertical for the photos.