Minecraft 1.7 Sword Tower/World Record Tower (WRT) Guide and Tutorial

Mostly just me rambling about the game, but I hope you can get something out of this. Originally ran for an hour long, but I edited it down to just 38 minutes :) Anyway, this is a guide for 1.7 sword towers intended for pre 1.9 runners and beginners. I know that the meta has shifted to fall towers recently, but this tower is always a fun one to do and can still get world record with good luck.

Timestamps:
[0:00-0:37] Introduction
[0:37-11:45] Tower Hole Builds
[11:45-19:40] Spider Protections
[19:40-23:59] How to Build the Tower
[23:59-29:28] Tower in Use
[29:28-38:51] Why Ladders Don't Always Catch You

Additional Information/Resources:
The original concept of sword towers was invented by Cscuile. Check him out here:    / cscuile  
For an indepth explanation of why ledge is useful, check out T_Wag's video:    • Speedrunners Guide to Towers Pt. 1 of...  
More accurate explanation of why ladders don't work after falling from specific heights: "it checks every tick for a ladder but you fall multiple blocks per tick at high speed so you can skip a ladder between ticks" (Toby).
World Record Tower (WRT) was the original name designated to this design by Cscuile, but the term sword tower has fallen into use more commonly nowadays
This video by Thomas (   • 1.7.2 Tower Strat Guide - Minecraft S...  ) used to be the go to tower strats guide, but has since become a little outdated so that is why I decided to make this video as an update to the information on that one. The video does include a nice chart of the resources needed to build the tower, so that is a useful piece of information to check.
I only mentioned one variant of crit tower because I don't really know much about them, so keep in mind there are other versions of the tower. I may even link some once someone builds them in video format.