Folding Wooden Stepladder

Step 9 Adjust Folding Action, Drill Holes

At this stage I spent some time dry-fitting the pieces to check that everything would work properly. I trimmed the back stretchers to length and put a angle at the end.

I hadn't made anything which folded up this way before, so I used some scrap pieces of wood to demonstrate to myself how the folding mechanism would work. The legs and supports basically form a diamond which folds to bring the two sides flat together (in theory!)

In reality, the back support did not want to fold fully flat against the steps.  D'oh!

After a lot of experimenting and thinking I improved the not-folding-properly situation by cutting the tops of the back stretchers at a slight angle, using a simple jig on the tablesaw.

This angle improves the folding but doesn't fix things totally.

I think the correct way to fix this would be to drill the bolt hole in the back stretchers quite a lot closer to the edge of the wood.

Once I was satisfied I had done all I could to fix the folding problem, I drilled the bolt holes. All the holes were drilled in my drill press with pairs of parts clamped together, so the holes would be aligned correctly.