The Gates…
Last year in May, I was assigned to rebuild two 6 foot wide gates. It was fun trying to come up with a way to build something that would last for a long time. I was told that the gates had been a source of constant problems since the weather and width of the gates conspired to cause them to droop and come apart to easily. I was told that they had been replaced several times and the last set had only been up for 3-4 years and was already falling apart.
With that information in mind, I tried to come up with a design which would last a little longer. The fence posts themselves had been replaced just the year before (’04) and the gates repaired and stiffened. The posts were OK, but the gates sucked and were falling apart again. I didn’t want to reset the posts so I just straightened them a little. They were still out of alignment a little but not so bad that I couldn’t work with them.
This is what the gates looked like in May of ’05:
Note that there are several patches holding the things up and the 2 X 4 on the left is breaking apart:
My camera failed last year before I was able to get pictures of the finished gates so I thought I’d put some on the blog that I took last week (May ’06):
Here’s a closer shot of one of the gates. I used a major triangle to support the horizontal piece along the top of the fence, used a 4″ X 4″ for the stile (wood on the gate that the hinges attach to), 2″ X 6″ for the runner and diagonal member and 2″ X 4″ studs for the final pieces. I tried to use as much cedar as possible (resists water and bugs) and obtained all the wood from the scrap pile so the wood was aged. The joints are a mixture of lap and compound lap. I used 2-part epoxy on all joints to delay rot. I angled the runner along the bottom so rain water would weep off. It was a lot of fun building them and this year I find that they are still very strong and doing well. None of the joints have separated at all. In fact the free ends of the gates are just as high off the ground this year as they were when I finished them last year. I used two major triangles and a minor compound form to stiffen and strengthen the gates while at the same time making the gates weigh less then if I had used 2″ X 4″ studs and tried to brace things well. The old gates used 2 X 4’s throughout.
And the other side, the wow on the left side is an optical illusion:
