Cedar is the best wood to use for building because is splits easily and it is rot resistant. Here are some guidlines for making rungs. Please note, do not cut down live cedars for making rungs, try and find some deadfall to use. You can split cedar using an axe, hammer and wedges or a hammer and froe. I just prefer using an axe and wedges as the wedges give you more control over difficult pieces of cedar.
1. Start with the best wood. This means using cedar deadfall at least 2ft in diameter and with what appears to be fairly straight growth. If you use narrow (younger) trees, there greater chance of having the wood warp as most of the wood you are using is heartwood. This heartwood (centre of the tree) is also not as durable as the outer growth.
2. Cut your blocks or rounds into the desired length for your rungs.
3. Score a line across the top of the block with your axe. The lines should be about 2 inches apart so you end up with relatively thick rungs.
4. Then hammer your wedges into the line you've scored across the top of the block. As you hammer the wedges further into the block a slab of cedar should split off the side of the round till you are left with something like this:
5. This slab can the be split into rungs.
Sometimes difficulties will occur and the cedar will not split squarely. This usually happens if there are knots in the wood or the grain is slightly twisted. There are basically two ways to get around this:
1. If you are making longer rungs there is a grerater likeliehood that the rung will twist on you. by scoring lines at both ends of the block and splitting from both ends you reduce the risk of getting a rung that is not square.
2. If you notice the split is starting to go off-line (not straight) you can correct it by scoring a line along the length (side) of the block and hamering in your wedges along the side.
Sometimes there is nothing you can do tho and you just end up with useless rungs.
We don't know what our limits are, so to start something with the idea of being limited actually ends up limiting us.
Ellen Langer