The Gate That Keeps On Swinging

Enlarge Image Image Gallery LAURIE GRACE

Crowned, Z-framed Gate Everyone who comes to your home handles an example of your carpentry twice per visit once when they open your gate and once when they close it. Take your time to build a gate that speaks well of your skill. Hang it square and plumb so that it opens and closes effortlessly, stays latched, and it will support the gate swinging impulses of two generations of kids. As suggested in "Wood Fences" (page 30), a gate's hinge post should be buried the greater of 3' or one-third of its length deep in the ground and anchored in packed dirt. The latch post too should be well-anchored, and both posts should be perfectly plumb in all dimensions, with perfectly parallel inner faces so that the framework of your gate describes a perfect rectangle. The horizontal members of a gate are called rails, just as in a fence. But the verticals aren't posts; they're stiles. Pickets are still pickets, and infill is infill. Just as you drew up a detailed plan of your fence, draw up one for the gate. Its design should compliment the fence, but needn't copy the bay design precisely. Try out some variations. Unless you have a plan that demands a deviation from the pattern, locate rails at the same levels as your fence rails. The tops of pickets on a gate, however, are often trimmed to form an arch. Gate boards will always look good if they are the same size and have the same spacing and ornamentation as the fence infill—but, try out variations on your plan.

A Z-Frame Walk Gate

The most sturdy gates have a rectangular frame with a diagonal brace running from the top of the latch post to the bottom of the hinge post. Weight of the gate presses down and into the hinges, compressing the wood. If the diagonal was installed the other way, the weight would pull down and stretch the brace. First, pick out your gate hardware. Easiest to install and adjust are eye and pintle sets that simply screw into pilot holes drilled into the gate's hinge-side stile and hinge post.

The eye goes into the post, the L-shaped pintle into the gate, and the eye simply slips down over the pintle—and and can easily be removed if necessary. Sturdy and simple, eye and pintles come in an attractive black wrought iron. You can also get black throw bolts or thumb latches to match.

You can also select butterfly-style, black-iron strap hinges with H-shaped flanges that screw onto the outside to ornament an out-opening gate. Or, to save money, choose heavily galvanized doorstyle butt hinges that must be inset a fraction of an inch into the wood of the gate post. Do not economize with the flimsy, lightly zinc-plated hinges and latches found in shrink-wrapped packages in hardware stores.

The screws that come with them will rust in a week, the unplated hinge pins in a season, and the plates will discolor within a year. And don't plan to protect the metal from rusting with paint; you must have seen gates with white-painted hinges bleeding through the paint, creating streaks of rustred on the wood. For frame wood, pick warp- and twist-free, straight-grained boards without any knots or cracks.

Cut and fit the pieces of your gate in place rather than in a shop. Despite your best efforts, posts may not be square to one another, and you certainly want the gate to fit perfectly. To shim (or level) the stiles, creating pivoting room between gate and post, buy a bundle of cheap wood roof shingles. (Once you have them, you won't know how you lived without them in your homemaintenance chores).

First, cut two stiles so they are the exact distance between the top edge of the top rail and the lower edge of the bottom rail of your fence (unless different on your plan). Rough-cut the horizontal rails so they're a tiny bit longer than the distance between the inner faces of the gate hinge posts at the level of top and bottom fence rails. Cuts are square and plumb. Using the power driver and easily removed drywall screws, tack a piece of infill board to the narrow side of a hinge stileone pair of long edges of the boards even with one another—so you can attach it temporarily to the post.

Locate the stile on the post (wide side of stile board facing the inner face of the post so the outer faces of both gate and fence-infill boards are even).