Building a gate - how sophisticated?

[David.WE.Roberts]

I've read the FAQ on building a gate and there is a lot of quite complicated mortice and tenon work plus different thicknesses of frame to fit the planking in flush.

Offhand mention of power chisel morticing machines and the like make me realise how unworthy I am to even approach timber.

Now the current gates are crap, made of thin wood, but they do seem to have retained their shape.

As far as I can tell there has been no fancy jointing, just rails, braces and stiles nailed together at the joins and the whole thing made rigid by the planking nailed to the frame.

I remember as a youth working with my brother to construct a gate on similar lines using robust timber and that seemed to last - it was still there when we left the house many years later.

So how important is the mortice and tenon jointing for an external gate?

I have a lot of off cuts of 2 * 5 which are tempting me to make a 'robust' gate with perhaps inch thick planking.

Cheers

Dave R

[polygonum]

The only gate I have made - now towards ten years old - had no joints at all. It is similar size to a typical internal door. And seems similar to your description.

Three pieces of half-round timber - must be around 6 inch diameter. One horizontal about a foot or so off the ground. Another horizontal at about the five foot mark. A diagonal between them - but simply stopping without any sort of connection to the horizontal rails at all. A series of half-inch thick, approx. two and a half inch wide strips - about half an inch or so apart. Screwed to the half-rounds (stainless steel screws

- I hate rust streaks).

Used electric plane to flatten a portion of the half-rounds. Slap on a couple of strap hinges. Paint/preserve. Done.

Actually I also made the top of the gate very nearly semi-circular (can't remember if I used a router or a jigsaw). And put a latch on it. And planed the square ends off the half-rounds.

It is strong. Has not warped. Nor dropped. Still fits the frame it is hinged onto.

[Tim Lamb]

In message , David.WE.Roberts writes

You could use *halving* joints for the top and bottom rails.

Simply nailing boards to a non rigid frame will lead to sagging. You must create triangles as in the Barnes Wallis Wellington.

You don't mention the proposed length but 2:1 width to height should be OK with a single diagonal brace.

[Roger Mills]

I've never used them! I've used halving joints and carriage screws at the corners of the frame, and screwed a diagonal brace in place with large woodscrews. [Make sure that the brace runs from the bottom on the hinge side to the top of the opposite side so that it is in compression rather than tension]

[Brian Gaff]

Yer don't need all that posh stuff, it depends how rustic its allowed to be. Brian

[John Rumm]

The wiki article is for a framed ledge and brace door... you can make a much simpler unframed one that has no real joinery to worry about.

If you are not using a frame then not at all, (and even with it there are ways around it such as half lap joints)

If you make a simple ledge and brace gate, all you need are three cross rails (top, middle, and bottom) and a couple of diagonal braces.

Imagine this, but without the stiles, and the planking covering one full side of it:

Lay out the top and bottom rails on the ground, and set the planking in place on top of them. The bottom rail wants to be a few inches up from the bottom of the planks, and the top can either be a few down from the top or right at the top if you prefer. Fix the planks to the top and bottom rails. Then fix the middle rail equidistant between them. Square the whole door up (pick up and drop gently on a corner until right). Now cut and fix the braces.

For longer life, paint / preserve the hidden bits of wood before assembly. If you want to get posh, then cut a bevel on the top of each rail so that water runs off it and away from the planks (although this means its easier to chop the braces into the rails a little rather than having to cut a compound mitre on the bottom of each one). If the top rail is right at the top, you can fit a wider capping piece with a apex cut onto it (i.e. bevelled to both top long edges) and fit that to shed water off the top.

[harry]

It's an appearance thing, that's all. You can make a perfectly serviceable gate without fancy joints. The important thing is to have the diagonal brace and to have it the right way round. Though you can use a diagonal wire the other way round, ie in tension.

If you need a fancy gate, it's often cheaper to buy one at the farm/ fencing store..

[David.WE.Roberts]

Thanks - small prize for that vital fact :-) [Although reading through again that is in the Wiki.]

Thanks to all for input - I will plan away.

My next task is to chose a lock which can be worked with a key from both sides, to make this into effectively an external door.

This is for the end of our new car port so will be access and security for the back of the house.

The old gates had bolts and stuff which could only be worked from the inside and you had to go through the house to lock or unlock when you were going out/coming in.

I note the ?Yale? lock in the picture in the excellent Wiki article.

Cheers

Dave R

[Andy Champ]

Our garden gate (which was an off-the-shelf one I assume) has the diagonal brace the wrong way around. I added a diagonal wire about 15 years ago and it pulled it back to shape and has been fine since.

Andy

[John Rumm]

A traditional "mortice" lock will do that... (even if you use the "planted on the face" version rather than one that needs a mortice since it sounds like you wont have a frame to mortice!)

Something to keep in mind with an unframed door is that its more likely to get damaged if someone tries to climb over it...

The owner wanted a convenient way of latching it shut with a token of security - so we thought we would try a cheap practically sacrificial lock. If he oils it from time to time, it should survive a few years even in the open like that.

[Rick Hughes]

I just built 2 gates .. fist off made a frame out of 4" x 2" using 1/2 half joints, glued and 4 screws per joint. A lot of the effort was done with a standard jack saw ... minor adjusting to fit with a chisel.

Made sure these were all nice & square and let glue set ... used external PVA wood glue.

Then I fitted in a diagonal brace. To make sure load was towards bottom hinge ... just cut it to correct angles with a bevel, let it into the vertical by about 1/4" to provide a 'stop' This was using some 5" x 1 3/4" scrap I had from some trusses. Glued & screwed.

No difficult mortice & tenon joints all just saw work.

Next I used 4" x 1" slats, spaced at 1" gap, these were arranged so that they were 8" higher & lower than horizontal rails.

On one of the gates, made more interesting shape by putting an S profile on top of slats to follow curve of the fence.

Very solid ... very stable ... and as all cut ends were follow soaked in preservative and I used treated wood should outlast me.

Gave it 2 coats of fence treatment for colour.

Pics here if description to difficult to follow.

[David.WE.Roberts]

Thanks

Photos especially are very useful :-)

Cheers

Dave R

[polygonum]

I *do* like the non-straight tops! Very nicely done.

[MrWeld]

I've built some 2-metre square barn doors which are like this:

but faced with 18mm OSB3 board.

Sagging is not a problem, but some of them are a bit twisted. In other words, when they are closed, the bottom edge is flush with the frame at both ends, but one of the top corners sticks out a bit.

Any advice on how to fix this? They are very heavy, so I don't really want to take them down and rebuild. I was thinking of forcing them back to the correct shape, and then fixing a steel or wood batten across one of the diagonals to hold it flat.

[harry]

Virtually impossible to fix. The timber warps in dry/wet weather. The only satisfactory solution is to use a timber like oak which doesn't warp as much as softwoods.

[stuart noble]

but faced with 18mm OSB3 board.

I'd try sliding bolts to hold the doors in position if they can be forced flush with the frame. If not, I fear you're buggered, and the piece that is causing the distortion will have to be replaced. My Victorian interior doors are well pissed, and it's the side jambs (i.e. the ones that takes the locks) that are the problem, and likely to remain so I'm afraid. I notice these sections are straight grained, possibly hemlock, but it hasn't stopped them misbehaving.

[John Rumm]

There are are a couple of tricks for getting doors flat when they twist. A simple one is to just try over bending them back into shape. i.e. if one corner sticks out, restrain that in position, and stick a block or something behind the other and force it closed. So you are twisting back to "right" and then further into "wrong" the other way from which it currently is. Leave it like that for at least a day. You may find when you release it is springs back to something closer to "right".

Without taking it down its harder to do much more.

Another trick that a joiner friend of mine favoured when attempting to make flat doors fit wonky houses without flat doorways (where jusy moving the stops was not going to hack it) was to stick a saw cut kerf in the shoulders of the tenons at strategic places, and then drive wedges into the opposing sides of the joints. Basically twisting the joints very slightly to compensate. It takes a bit of planning to make sure you move the right joints in the right direction. The amount of twist needed to correct is usually tiny since the effect is multiplied along the whole width/height of the door.

[Rick Hughes]

Just wanted to make the sidewall a bit of a feature .. hence the cast stone pillar capos (light to be fitted to two outer pillars) and a curve to fence tops between the pillars ..

When it came to adding gate, decided to make it a bit more interesting and follow the same 'curve'

Achieved by setting them out on garage floor, using a hosepipe as the curve, and adjusting until it looked right, pencilled the curve and cut with saw.