I would like to put a gate across the passage that leads to our garden. I would like a solid "door style" gate, about 3'3" wide and 6' tall.
I know you use a Z shape brace on the back to hold it all together but do you just butt the planks together or is it better to use tongued and grooved wood? Would you glue them or would nails/bolts be enough?
I know 18mm T&G is readily available and often used as floorboards; is T&G available in thicker sizes?
What's the best way to mount it? Onto a stout fence post?
What is the best way to lock it shut? Would you use a padlocked bolt or could you somehow incorporate a mortice lock?
BTW would you cramp the wood together whilst the glue sets and if so, is it worth paying for Irwin cramps? They seem to cost twice as much as the other makes. Are they worth the extra or are you just paying for the name?
Glue is almost useless outdoors. The wood swells enough to split either the joint, or the wood.
Galv screws or bolts are the way to go.
get it made up. I use 19mm 'charcter' (=full of knots and shit) oak for this sort of thing, to 'door kit' specification.
yes. agricultural suppliers will have this sort of think ready made.
Padlock is better if you think someone really wants to get in. Mortice will shatter the wood with a jemmy quite easily.
You dont glue and its pointless crampimg.
Simply make up (preferably) a morticed Z-frame doweled together if possible rather than screwed..lasts a bit longer - and screw from the back into the actual boards. I tend to use oak plugs in sunken screw holes to get rid of teh heads.
If you don't want gaps appearing use T & G, otherwise just butt.
Trim final door to size after construction, and for outdoors completely coat it in something weatherproof several times over.
Most cheap softwopd outdoor gates would be something like 15mm pine on a
30mm frame.
I use 19mm oak on 30mm oak frame. Looks much better.
google is your friend to find hinges and latcches etc.
T&G prevents gaps opening up between the planks, and it restrains them if one warps. It also encourages rot.
as TNP said forget glue. Bolts are more secure than screws are more secure than nails.
that works.
2 locking points if youre serious about it staying locked. Pointy bits above to discourage climbing. I'd hate to be relying on a garden gate for security though.
Make sure you preserve / creosote the T&G before putting it together. I used 2x3 (inch) for my gate, and it had the z braces plus timbers around the edge. Simon.
I have made several, the first for myself about 12 years ago - the side passage is only 2feet 6 wide so nothing commetcially available. Made it
8ft high - it firs in with the lie of the land. Made to a ledged and braceg design in pine from a local timber merchant using 125 x 25 timber for the ledges/braces (3 ledges). Cladding was t&g Vjointed 100 x 18. Clading laid out, braces fitted & screwed from front in an attractive pattern, trimmed to size. I used galvanised fittings, latch on middle ledge & bolts on top & bottom. To allow neighbours in to water plants I routed out a piece of the ledging to take a mortice lock and coach bolted it to the gate just under the centre stile. The whole assembly was soaked in (real) creosote and shows no sign of deteriorating 12 years on, even the galvanised fittins show little sign of deterioration.
Without T&G gaps will open between the boards in summer when it dries out.
Hot dip galvanised nails or brass/stainless screws. No need to glue, indeed as others have pointed out the movement will nagger any glued joint.
Thicker! Is this just a deterent against access or for real security? I'd use 4 x 1 PAR for the ledges and braces faces with 10mm T&G cladding for just a gate to block the way.
At least a 3" square preferably 4" with the best part of 2' in the ground. You say "across the passage" that implies to me a wall on at least one side in which case 2" sq fixed to the wall and the gate fixed to that will do.
It's outdoors, so it will move with seasonal moisture changes. T&G is too fine and will break, a half-lapped edge is better. Your boards should only be fastened in the centre of the board, so that their edges can move in and out freely. The half-lap stops a gap appearing. You can buy timber machined like this, saw it on your table saw (best), hand plane it with a #78 or rebate with a router.
The Z frame and hinges are where the strength is. As a minimum, use half laps with bolts through them. Diagonal brace "under" the rails looks best.
For strength, nails, bolts and screws. If you use nails, use long ones and clench them over on the back (Crop diagonally to 1 1/2" long, bend the last 1/4"-1/2" to make a spike, then bend the stub sideways across the grain and hammer it into the timber. Looks neat when done carefully.
Buy better timber, with better rot resistance. Larch or Douglas fir.
Whatever is handy. Toolstation / Screwfix do big galv hinge sets.
Padlocked bolt. Too skinny for a mortice lock, rimlocks are generally flimsy. If you have a substantial and weatherproof rimlock (some Yale pin tumbler deadlocks) then use that.
I wouldn't bother gluing it, as glue won't last anyway. You need a flat assembly surface (tarmac is fine), three or four cheap lightweight aluminium long clamps, and an anvil-shaped object for clenching the nails against. I suggest assembling the Z frame, attaching two light battens to hold this in place, then nailing the skin to the frame. Finally remove the battens.
I was interested to read that larch and Douglas fir are more resistant to rot. Where can I learn more about what wood has what qualities?
Rim lock is what I meant. I knew mortice lock was the wrong word because I knew the mortice was the slot it fitted into but I just didn't know what the right word was. Thanks. A couple of posters have suggested padlocks being best, so I will go down that route. The only disadvantage of a padlock is that it only really allows unlocking from one side, unless you cut a hole in the gate.
A deterrent against opportunistic theft. I don't have anything valuable behind it but a burglar wouldn't know that, so I'd like to keep them out in the first place.
There are walls on both sides but only one is mine so I don't want to drill into my neighbour's wall. I was thinking I could attach a post to my wall or fasten to my wall direct and bury a fence post on my neighbour's side.
Thanks. I'm wondering why using the table saw is best rather than a router? Wouldn't you have to make two passes with a table saw but only one with a router?
Is there a reason to use half lap joints rather than saw the edges at
45 degrees? Wouldn't that allow for expansion without creating gaps to see through?
in the average workshop, a saw is usually there, with the right cutter already in it :-)
a router usually is not, at least in table format, and needs the right cutter fitting.
People with table saws tend to find very creative ways to do a lot with them!
It's possible, but leads to weak splintery edges,. It is in fact what weatherboard or feather edge or whatever the lapped style boards, essentially are..
Plenty of ways of cat skinning, as you are appreciating.
T & G is just widely available, so why not use it?
Unfortunately the two best resources for this are American, so cover US species more than Europe's
They are Bruce Hoadley's "Understanding Wood"
and also the US Forest Products Wood Handbook
The first of these is printed on convenient paper, but the second is a free download. Take your pick. You can buy the Wood Handbook printed too.
Hoadley is known for two books, both excellent. "Understanding Wood" is more about abstract behaviour, so is useful across any wood species. It's an essential read for anyone who wants to really understand wood shrinkage with moisture change. His other book on identifying timber species is good too, but that does get a little US- specific.
There are many other similar books, but these two are the good ones. Try eBay for S/H timber identification guides from UK publishers.
I didn't learn to love larch until I started working with it on big timber framing jobs, because it was cheaper than oak. Up until then I thought it was crappy, rotty soft whitewood, same as hemlock. As it's so resionous, it's actually pretty good for rot resistance. Can be twisty though, so pick your timber carefully. Doug fir is what you'll be offered in most timber yards if you ask "Have you go anything a bit better?". It's closer-ringed, finer grained, bit stronger, a lot more predictable than the other common softwoods.
You might even use Parana pine (rainforest, bit iffy) or pitch pine (probably old recycled these days). If you have somewhere local that does recycled Victorian warehouse timbers, pitch pine is the best thing you could ever make a (softwood) door out of - nice to work too.
In general, people with well-equipped workshops make everything on the cabinet saw unless they can't, and only then do they start looking at their other tools. Number of passes never matters for one-offs, it's ease of setup that matters.
You could make this either way. I'd throw the bits carelessly into my crosscut box on the big saw (I also have a 45=B0 cross-cut box, which comes in handy from time to time) and would have them already made without barely thinking about it.
For timber framing work, I can't move the frame pieces as they're too big, so I'd do it with a handheld circular. A Stanley triangular square with an adjustable angle guide makes a good, quick saw guide for this work too.
If I had a router, I'd also be able to work pieces I couldn't easily lift or slide across a table. However routing is always slower than sawing, even when you're multi-passing over the saw. You could certainly do it though, and if you're on-site with just a router, that's how you'd do it. One trick is to leave the ends long and not machined, so that you can support the router spanning the cut. Then when you've bottomed it all out nicely, saw to length. If I was routing it, I'd probably bother to _not_ take the cut in the horizontal rails all the way across (easy with a router, impossible on the saw), making this a blind half-lap. The end grain of the diagonal wouldn't show, so it looks just that little bit neater.
I could do them with a chop saw too, but don't much like the things.
Yes, because that makes a joint. Butting them at 45=B0 is just a butt, not a joint. Nor mechanical strength, no glue strength (endgrain doesn't glue worth a damn), not even much good for putting mechanical screw fasteners across. If you're only going to butt them, you might as well not bother putting the diagonal on at all, it won't do much.
Wood expands and shrinks tangentially (widthwise) and radially. Wet to dry (any species) is 10% tangentially, 5% radially, tangential/radial ratio is constant at 2:1 and not so you'd ever notice lengthwise. Note that "wet" and "dry" vary between species: some wood is much wetter or drier fresh off the tree, and their movement with moisture content varies a bit across the species, but this total movement max to min is pretty constant.
So to start worrying about moisture movement, look for the widest dimension across tangential timber. That's where you'll notice it first. In your door, it's widthwise across the vertical boards. Your "Z frame" in contrast is made of beams joined at their ends (this is characteristic of all frames, for just this reason) and so only has to worry about the negligible lengthways movement. So make the frame up pretty rigid, then hang the boards off it to fill the hole, worrying about their shrinkage.
Board movement (as external doors suffer weather) is 10%, which means half an inch for a typical board. That's probably more than you expected. So wide half-lapped edges can cope with this, tongue & groove or diagonal laps can't. If you don't want to deal with this on that basis, make a gate with deliberate gaps between the slats. It'll still look good, you'll just be able to see through it, and it won't need to worry about moisture in the design.
Oh. it does notice, green to dry. About 1%. on 2 meter high post, its
20mm. THAT notices.
I'd say that's a BIT higher than I have seen.
5%..
I've seen many a T & G door be OK in terms of gapping.Yes they open up, but not enough to gap.
Possibly because they are assembled dry, and tend to swell into compression. If the boards are well secured to the frame, that won't push them apart.
If you don't want to deal with this on
The key is to bolt stuff down HARD. two screws at each edge of the board, to prevent edges cupping outwards. And try and pick reasonable quarterish grain stock
so it wont cup outwards.
Wood will take a lot of compression,,but will split in tension across the grain.
Another aspect of shrinkage is that over a number of cycles, the wood stops moving so much and gradually settles down to a figure closer to the dry dimension. For a typical board, this can be 10-20 cycles widthwise (depends a lot on species), but for length it's almost instantaneous and most European species (although not tropicals) will get to his point within 1 or 2 cycles.
10% is (obviously) just a round number. It's usually a bit more than this, in fact - maybe 12%. However it's also the worst-case value for fully(sic)-wet to fully-dry and most importantly, that's the value after reaching equilibrium with the outside. So the lighthouse keeper's netty might only go from soaking to half-dry over a year, a granary in Norfolk might go from bone-dry to half-wet. There's also the question of paint or varnish. Now this does nothing to shift the equilibrium final value, but it does delay the reaching of this value such that you might never reach it before the weather changes. It can take months to change the moisture content of thick, dry (i.e. atmospheric humidity, but no water splash) timber that has been in service for a couple of years.
So 5% is indeed what you're likely to see. But for a rule of thumb when designing, use 10%.
I've seen many that were OK too. Also plenty that gapped. On the whole, I'll build to avoid this happening.
The usual thing with T&G though is that it's cupping that gets them, not simple linear expansion. As boards are flat-sawn from small diameter trees, the rings within a board are tightly curved, relative to the size of the board. So a board that moves doesn't just shrink, it cups too. (if you quarter-saw, of if you use the outsides of big trees, you can avoid or reduce this.
Usually you lay boards so that heart is in (or out), but it's consistent. When these cup, they bend the tongue and groove relative to each other and snap the tongues off by bending, If you lay the board alternately, the T&G wil stay perfectly parallel, but it'll be shifted sideways. The tongues still come off, this time by shear. To be fair, it's harder to break them off by bending than by shearing, but still neither is good.
Don't use (typically sized) T&G on outdoor work, use laps instead.
Trouble with that is that wood isn't very elastic - it yields instead.
That's the amateurs usual response - shame it doesn't work.
The problem is yield. If you assemble wet, they shrink apart and gap. if you assemble dry, they swell when wet, crush and become narrower, shrink when dry again and they still gap.
The fix is to overlap, not to butt them side by side and hope that Ever Bigger Screws will fix it.
For the big stuff I don't use nails or screws at all, I use green timber framing.
Not a fecking hope. Besides which, the sideways movement will do for you and your fasteners will be loose in a year.
This is why I make braced doors by using clenched nails, not screws, not bolts (well, hinges to frame I do) and certainly not glue. A nail is a somewhat flexible joint, especially a clenched one, as that can permit a bit of movement but still not work falling-out loose.
I like a nice bit of unicorn horn trim on the doorknob too.
Quarter-sawn stock is _not_ an option here. If it was, we'd be building a frame and panel door with joinery, not a ledged & braced carpenter's door.
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