Best way to repair badly designed gate

[Prof Wonmug]

We have a couple of wooden gates. The latches keep bnreakiong because the gates were badly designed so that all of the force of closing is borne by the latch. I would appreciate suggetsions for how to modify the gate to add some sort of "stop" to take the force off the latch.

I have uploaded several photos of the gate to this link:

The gate from the front, both closed and open.

03: The gate from the back.

04: The broken latch. This time, the latch got metal fatigue and broke. Other times, it has pulled the screws loose.

05: This shows that the gate has no stop other than the latch. If pushed closed without a latch, it will go well past fully shut. The latch takes the full force.

06: This shows that the side rail of the gate and the frame are the same width. One idea I had was to nail a length of 1/2" x 1/2" stock vertically onto the frame. The problem is that the gate will then not close fully. In addition to having to shim the latch, I will get grief from SWMBO because it doesn't align.

07: This shows the bottom of the gate. There is very little clearance. Another idea I had was to make a threshold with a stop similar to the idea above. The stop could be outside the frame, which would allow the gate to close fully. The downside to this is (a) the clearance and (b) it will be something to trip over.

Another idea is to fasten small "fingers" on the back side of the gate (parallel with the latch). I was thinking one at the top and one at the bottom. Maybe one in the middle. The downside of this is it is unattractive and they would be prone to stabbing someone.

My last idea is to fasten a piece of 1x5 to the front of the latch-side frame with about 1" protruding into the opening for the gate to bang against. This is minimally obtrusive and not likely to snag anyone.

Is there a better way?

PS: Sorry for cross-posting. I wasn't sure which group is the better fit.

[Tom Veatch]

If the gate frame is thick enough, cut a rabbet in the gate frame to fit over and bypass the fixed stop when the gate is closed. Doesn't change the alignment of the gate with the fixed frame when the gate is closed.

___________ [ __________ ___ ] ] ] ____] _______] ] ]_____________

Tom Veatch Wichita, KS USA

[mm]

Especially when the download is limited to 80KB unless you upgrade to Max which costs 6 dollars a week and 100 dollars a year. Boing!!!

Other people find free places to post their pictures, at least that are free to us.

[Gary H]

I didn't even try because of the ridiculous requirement to enable scripts.

[RicodJour]

Post some pictures of your golf net so people will know you follow through. :)

R

[Tom Veatch]

Well, I honestly feel that the 32 seconds I spent downloading the file wasn't a very heavy burden. At zero financial cost to me, BTW.

Tom Veatch Wichita, KS USA

[Andrew Erickson]

My thoughts (but please don't take this as gospel!)

Is it necessary that the gate be latched closed, or merely that it stay closed? If the latter, perhaps a self-closing hinge of some sort--I'd probably choose a double-direction one if it were me--would be an ideal answer. No latch, no banging, no nothing. Lee Valley has such a "Double-Acting Hinge" in their Gate Hardware section.

If that won't work, I might be tempted to see about introducing some sort of buffer material in the hinges; a thin piece of leather, say, glued to one of the leaves. If it's in the middle of the hinge, I don't think it would tend to rip them off/apart all that much, and if sized right, it could provide some added dampening for the latch.

Another possibility might be a different style of latch, one that requires manual intervention to activate. One old design uses an offset vertical rod on the gate and a ring held captive in a handle-like piece on the post. To latch, the ring is lifted and slipped over the vertical rod of the gate, encircling it and the bit on the post. Another possibility is some kind of a trough arrangement that hinges down from the post over the top of the gate.

Of the ideas you posted, I think the doorstop ones (whether one built into the ground or a stop plank added on to the post) are the most practical. The stop plank may tend to work loose from the post or split and break from the banging of the gate if not sufficiently well sized or attached.

[Kerry Montgomery]

Post some pictures of your golf net so people will know you follow through. :)

R

-end of previous posts- R, Wouldn't he have to post a video of his swing so people could tell if he follows through? ;-) Kerry

[Prof Wonmug]

I've used that site many times in the past and no one has complained. I didn't realize that it required scripts. But I've only uploaded, never downloaded.

Do you know of a bettetr place to post the photos?

As for the size, each photo is almost 2MB. I uploaded 7 different views. I can set the camera for lower resolution and reshoot.

[Prof Wonmug]

I assume this is a top view?

Is the part on the left the frame and the part on the right the gate?

To make it align properly, I'd need to cut a rabbet in both the frame post and the edge of the gate, then attach the stop (same thickness as the rabbet cut) to the gate. Right?

I foresee a couple of problems with this:

1. I can't cut the rabbet all the way to the bottom. The post is sitting on concrete and bricks. So, the stop would also not go all the way down. That's probably OK.

1. The catch on the post is very close to the edge. I'd have to see if it can be moved over past the rabbet cut.

Might be doable.

Maybe I can get a metal plate or strip to use as a stop.

[Tom Veatch]

Yeah, a top view. I was thinking of the part on the left being the swinging part of the gate, opening toward the top of the page. The part on the right is the gate post with a fixed stop attached to it. The fixed stop is what you were talking about as the 1/2x1/2 piece nailed to the post. The rabbet would only have to be cut in the swinging part of the gate to fit over the stop which would be nailed, or otherwise attached to the post.

Tom Veatch Wichita, KS USA

[Upscale]

alt.binaries.pictures.woodworking would be appropriate since it is considered the sister image newsgroup to rec.woodworking. Most/many people won't download large images, so I'd suggest the maximum you make them would be 600-800 pixels wide. If there's a particular area you want to focus on (such as the latch on your gate), then take a picture of the gate at high resolution and crop the image to just the latch itself, again nothing wider than the suggestion above. Also suggest you don't upload more than two or three images at a time if they're large resolution.

[J. Clarke]

Flickr.com is free (as long as you don't do too much volume) to both post and view, requires no registration or login or anything else to view, automatically creates thumbnails in several sizes, and once you have set up your account and installed their uploader software it's drag-and-drop convenient.

[Steve Turner]

I'll second the vote for flickr.com. The a.b.p.w newsgroup might otherwise be the obvious choice, but these days it seems most people no longer have access to the binary groups unless they're willing to pay extra for the service. flickr.com is free, easy to use, and has a lot of nice features.

[Doug Miller]

Absolutely unnecessary to make them that large.

Most folks won't bother downloading 14MB of still images of a gate. Stills of Jennifer Anniston, maybe....

There are numerous programs available, free, which can resize images to whatever size you want. IrfanView is one of the best.

[Doug Miller]

Except for the fact that most major ISPs don't carry binary groups anymore... GRRRR.

[Mark Lloyd]

I block scripts too.

For may find it significant that I've been using computers since 1982 and have NEVER gotten a virus.

I have my own website, which I post photos too. Free websites are available to anyone.

I wouldn't need lower resolution, but there are people limited to POTS dial-up.

[Mark Lloyd]

I use IrfanView on the PC.

[Mark Lloyd]

I would be interested in seeing how it works to view something on Flickr.com . Do you have a link for viewing something?

[RicodJour]

I like IrfanView as well, but for most things Picasa is the simplest solution I've found. Unless I have something very specific to do where I need to use more than one application to do it, I use Picasa.

It imports your pictures automatically when you put the card in your computer (not just importing to a folder), the editing functions are fairly robust for a simple program (it's not Photoshop), all editing is reversible, it will upload to your free Picasa web albums, automatic resizing when uploading, etc., etc.

R