I want to make a pair of gates, each around 10ft wide and 6ft high. I would like the appearance from one side to match an adjacent feather-edge boarded fence - the other side doesn't matter.
I am minded to make a frame from RHS, with timber bolted to the top and bottom rails and feather-edge boards nailed to the timber. Any advice, please, on a suitable steel section for the frame and any bracing? Or better ways to do it? MIG welding the frame is no problem.
Any suggestions for gate post material and dimensions?
Kevin Poole coughed up some electrons that declared:
My mate, with whom I lodged many years ago did exactly waht you are proposing. The dimensions were similar to yours (are you also trying to keep pikeys out by any chance? ;->
IIRC, he used box section steel, about (this is a big about) 60x30mm, used side on (ie the 60mm was in the vertical plane for the top and bottom rails).
It was a box, with IIRC one diagonal. He bolted battens to the frame as you are suggesting, then nailed feather board onto the battens. All steel was MIG welded.
Worked a treat.
Two things that caught him out though:
1) However good the gate posts are, these things are *heavy* and will pull your posts over to a degree. He'd built compensation into the hinges by means of long bolts which you moved the nut along until the gate aligned, then a second nut locked it. He was on the limit here, so perhaps allow more than you think.
2) He forgot to put a ground bolt on one of the two gates. The gates locked together by means of a sliding bar though the meeting faces of the box section, but wind-wobble bent this.
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