MUST HAVE painting tools!!! Ladder Levelers

this chris idaho painter here on paint life tv today i got a video i'm going to be showing you how to install an auto ladder leveler right here i've been using these things for about 15 to 17 years now these are simply a must-have tool for any painter this can be painted on any type of uneven surface i use them working on stairs they self-level themselves on stairs on roofs i use them on ground that has uneven surfaces too they're installed permanently on the ladder they're very effective once you have them installed they self-level themselves and lock themselves into place it takes about an hour to install this thing this is simply a must-have tool for every painter or homeowner that has an uneven surface and has a um extending ladder that they're going to be using i'm going to be installing it right here show you how it installs probably about an hour so stay tuned for this video so here's a section of ladder i'm going to be working with i've got that separated from my ladder and we'll begin on the step-by-step you know process now it'll be starting with step number one we'll be turning our ladder up on the side now i can see the side rail right here we're going to begin working with this side rail doesn't matter what side you start with you can start with right or left all right this step now is a pretty critical step we're going to be drawing a line on on this ladder and this line if you don't draw the line correctly this is where things can go really wrong and so we're not going to be working with this wrong we're going to be working with this wrong up here so just read your instructions they got a great diagram explaining where this line is supposed to go and um so just follow those instructions i'm going to draw my line i'm going to be using a sharpie marker it'll be easy to see uh once it's on there to do it um for any cutting all right now this this detail it shows you on um my instructions right here i'm gonna be drawing this line right across this inside section of this rung so i'm gonna have a straight edge and i'm just gonna draw that line right there this line is very important so i'm gonna use this straight edge to get this line drawn and i'm going to draw it right yeah got that line drawn it's gonna look just like that there's my line all right now that i got the line drawn on this rung i'm just gonna flip it over i'm gonna do this same identical step on the opposite rung so see my straight edge lines up right with the inside curve portion of this rung i'm going to draw this line right here and there we go all right our next step in the process is i've got to locate my templates i've got multiple templates right here but only um one of the templates are for the ladder that i'm using i've got a d series um 1200 series ladder and that is going to be template number two for me and so i'm going to be cutting out template number two and there's a right and a left of both of these so i'm going to cut these things out and then the rest of them can just be discarded you're not going to need them for anything so i'm just going to be cutting along the dashed line here make sure you know exactly where you're supposed to cut it explains in the instructions [Music] all right here's another step i'm going to be working with my right side rail so make sure when this ladder is standing up right side rail is the same this rail on your right side so the feet um are in the up position spikes down i know this is i'm facing the ladder right here so i know this is the right side um it was upside down the feet would be opposite so i just get that correctly so here's my right side we'll be working with the right side first so i got my right template this is um where the line comes into place that you draw on when i'm setting up my template right here there's also i do need to cut out the center portion of the template which i forgot to do there's a little square right inside here it says cut along these dashed lines so i'm going to carefully cut along that because there's some really important lines on this template that line up with that line you drew and you have to be able to see through um your template and see the rung so here's um i got my template right side got my right side template i'm going to set it right on here and the line on the template lines up with the line that you drew so i'm going to set that right on there and then we've got to um fold our template um or tape our template in place it does say there's some you want to fold it right here on the dotted line so i'm going to fold this template and it's going to set right inside there and i'll fold it let's see all right i got my template folded now i'm going to take this thing once my lines are lined up straight i'm going to tape this thing right in place so i do have that's where one of the tools you got to have is tape so now it's telling me just to put a piece of tape on both ends and inside the square so i'm just going to put let's get this thing make sure it's lined up correctly i'm going to put just using a piece of shirt tape frog tape orange we'll put a piece right side here you want to cover up anything that you're going to be there's um some holes marked that we're going to be drilling it's showing me to put a piece of tape on the end right here okay i want to take and make sure my template is centered also right down it's got a center line um right down the middle this template so i'm going to make sure that that thing is centered right down the center of my ladder template is centered down the middle ladder there we go all right my template is all in place now there's six holes that's where your center punch comes into play if you don't have a springful center punch you're gonna have to use a center punch and a hammer which is you know it's not bad but this thing is available in our store so i'm going to center punch these things right where it shows me the center punch them perfect next one all right i've got all six holes center punched i'm gonna remove the tape and what i'm gonna do now is with my template still in place i'm just gonna place the tape on the other side i'm gonna draw a line at the bottom of this template right here across the entire bottom and this is going to be our cut line this is where we're going to cut our ladder right here this is the scary part if you do it wrong um the ladder's not good so i'm going to take my square and i'm going to make sure my line is all around little five my ladder here [Applause] and then i'm going to do the opposite to the opposite foot and then we're going to cut our feet off not my feet for the latter speed all right so i found the mysterious 9 30 seconds bit i had a larger drill bit set um in the garage that had one so on one of the nice things about the center punches um if you center punch it strike it hard enough your drill bit's not going to walk around and it's going to start drilling right where it's supposed to um without walking and so the first time i you know did this i didn't center punch it i just marked it with a pen and on the drill bit walked in as kind of a pain in the neck but um so if you don't know what drill bit walking is you want to just look that up on google hole number one [Music] okay got my holes drilled six holes drilled on this side got a bunch of metal chips just gonna vacuum up don't want to be standing in them tracking them everywhere so i'm just going to vacuum these things up really quick um also when you're drilling um it's you know good to wear safety glasses got some edge safety glasses on and we'll be drilling with the filing i'm just going to be hand boiling so that's not a big deal but you should wear safety glasses when you're doing this stuff right i'm going to flip my ladder over and we are going to do our opposite side right here i'm going to drill these holes now all right now i'm going to cut my feet off on my feet with the ladder um so i've got instead of sitting here doing it by hand um my battery operated saber saw is not working so we've got a galactic one so i'm going to cut it one right here [Music] so all right i saw it off my legs the legs are off now uh i'm going to just file my foot right here all right we're on to the next step and this is measuring where we're going to cut our square rod and this is extremely important that you get these measurements right there's diagrams on the instructions that give you instructions of where you want to measure it my ladder meets the top diagram so i'm going to measure the outside distance of the webbing on here and it's seven and one eight you're going to add two and a half inches to that number and that's where you're going to cut your rod so um 17 and an eight plus um two and a half i'm not so good with math so that's me 17 18 19 and a half plus an eight so we're going to go 19 and a half and an eight that would be 5 8 that would be my guess but um you don't want to guess so check and double check and i'm going to do the math on this once i mark this to double check so 19 i'm going to mark this rod at 19 and 5 8. very critical that this is done correctly so i had 17 and an 8 and then i'm going to add two and a half inches to that um so 17 18 19 uh an eighth to a half is 5 8. so i think i have it all correct so i'm going to jump back over here i can cut it with you know my saw or i can cut it with my saw some kind with my saw okay i've cut my rod hopefully my measurements were right i'm going to re i'm kind of curious if you cut it wrong do you just call werner and will they send you another one dead on so i'm going to take my file i just want to file this get any burrs off any edges off because this is going you'll see where it's going and so you want this to be filed so it has no burst on it i can feel no burs on it because it's going to go inside is one thing i don't have to read instructions for right now it goes right inside there one of your feet all right so i'm ready to go on to the next step i believe we're gonna start mounting these feet on here which is the exciting part so here we go we're going to put our rod in one of our feed here and then gonna put this through i believe it's the bottom rung right through here we're gonna put it right through there um get our bolts lined up with our holes got my foot pushed in there now this is when i start putting some of these screws together just like it explains to me so i've got um these little brackets are going to go in between my screws and my nuts actually screws but nuts all right so we've got to our legs the screws coming through now we're going to be sticking these brackets i guess is what we can call them put these brackets on each side we're going to be putting a nut down each one of these bolts we're gonna screw those tight or not necessarily screw them tight but i'm gonna use a i believe that's probably our three-eighths um three-eighths or seven sixteenths that's a seven sixteenths all right now i've got two i've got the one foot installed i have to verify that my shaft length is correct and so now they've got this handy little template that um i can use to test my shaft length so i'm just going to cut it along these dotted lines so i can use this template to just make sure i'm all good so now i can see i can put this up here and um see if i can do it from the opposite side but it has to fall within that range right there i'm looking at it from this side so i'm allowable range now if you're not in that allowable range you have to stop here and obtain another rod from um werner and it says in the instructions that they'll provide you another rod because that means you didn't measure right and you didn't cut right i'm in allowable range so now i can proceed on to the next step so without removing the tape um i'm going to attach the other foot now so here we go so let's tell me i got to cut the tape without removing it i've got to cut it at the gap right here so i'm going to cut it at this gap which that's kind of weird because now it's going to move so [Applause] now they say to just slice the tape right here at the seam so that this thing on the ladder leveler will move freely so i'm going to slice that tape and it's electrical this is that step you don't want to do until the end and now the tape is sliced everything's mounted test more than my feet work so one up the other one should go down it's self level if it doesn't not do that something's gone wrong and um thank goodness i've installed quite a few of these and nothing's ever gone wrong um with one of them i've not done one wrong yet so that's because i follow the directions so now i need to figure out what's the front side of the ladder because it whacked off my feet and i don't have any feet on there now um the rungs how they set i turn it right around this way i can see my lungs are angling away from me this is the front of the ladder it leans up against the house like that so i know my spikes are going to be facing in that direction so spikes up top it's like this will set it on there now i can install this little gadget right here whatever we want to call it that right inside there um this one tells you to have you know two of these um so you can do both sides so you can have a crescent wrench you know i've got you know the socket wrench that i can just use we are done so we'll take it outside we'll show you what it looks like and i actually have um multiples of these ladders with these levers levelers on them i have you know the extension ladders that ratchet up but then i also have all my vehicles just one just like this you know without the other part of the extension later on because it's just light light easy to carry and um it's very versatile for all kinds of things put some ladder groups on the top of it and we'll show you how this thing if you've never seen um we'll actually we'll show you inside here because inside my um shop we've got areas where we can show you how it actually levels so i'm walking over here and show you all right so i got my legs all installed i'm going to show you how effective uh quick and easy these legs are how well they function so got my uh legs they're self-leveled on a step right here now i'm gonna move it and you're gonna see how quickly they will self-level themselves now you can see how quickly it's done ladder's ready to go i can move it into place it's self-leveled so this could be a scenario could be um rocks it could be uneven ground it could be on a roof you can use it in conjunction with a pivot ladder box if you had a step that's you know too high and you still needed to get another foot leveled so not quite tall enough i can stick a ladder box under there or i can level this foot out with something else like a 2x4 back to level once again amazing these feet are something you should have at least on one of your extension ladders they do add a little extra weight so i don't put them on all my extension ladders because it just makes them harder to carry around but a must-have tool installed on one of your ladders i like these self-leveling feet versus the other ones where you've got to put pins and adjust them because they never like exactly you'll level the way you want them to and it just takes a little more work setting pins and stuff like that self levelers must have tool for any painter or homeowner that's using a um an extension ladder on uneven ground hope you've enjoyed this video if you have give us a thumbs up if you think this product's really cool give it a thumbs up down below if you got any questions or comments about the installation process how these are used or if you've used them yourselves and you want to um give a shout out to the product or say what you like or dislike about a product just put it down in the comments section below if you want to just give a shout out to what country you're from what city you're from we would like to know where our audience is all over the world out there give a shout out in the comment section below the latter levelers and stuff i'll give some more information in the video description where you can purchase these devices out there so um you can get more information about them there anyways hopefully you've enjoyed this video if you have we'll see you on our next video hopefully out [Music]