Garden gate

[dedee]

Neil,
I wish some of my mistakes came out as well as that. Even if it is not structually as sound as it coud be it still fulfills a purpose and you will never forget the lessons learnt.

Andy

 

[Neil]

Thanks, Andy - it seems to be solid enough now that it is put together, it was just a bit embarrassing/frustrating when bits kept falling off during the build process! Luckily, I got them glued back on straight away and the joins are (almost) invisible

Anyway, it served its purpose which was to persuade me that I am competent enough to start butchering hardwoods instead!

Cheers,
Neil

 

[RogerS]

Any thoughts, chaps, on my post ..top of this page?

 

[Neil]

Sorry, Roger

I'm the wrong person to give any advice about weak mortice positions, but re: your growth rings in the T&G, I don't think you need to worry, because of exactly the reason you highlighted.

Neil

 

[dedee]

Roger,
I am ashamed to say that the only gate I have put together was from a Wickes kit and the only lesson I learnt was not to try and nail the tongue and groove - it split. I screwed them instead, two screws in both the top and bottom rails and one in the cross brace for each piece.

I think I'd prefer option B when laying the T&G if possible.

Andy

 

[Chris Knight]

Roger,

I prefer position 2 for rail A. In position 1 there will be very little strength in the top of the mortise and the weight of the gate will tend to lever our the short grain at that point. Resistance will come mainly from glue and pegs (presuming you intend to peg these joints which I would certainly do for outside use).

For your T&G boards I would use configuration A as I prefer all the boards to be cupped outwards rather than the waffle board effect from alternating any cups.

 

[RogerS]

Chris

Pegs. It's only when you stop to consider them that you realise how little you really know

Material - dowel?

I've read about having the holes offset so that you pull the tenon in tight into the mortice but that raises some questions in my mind. By how much is it offset?

Let's say 1mm. In which case do you have to taper the dowel...otherwise it's going to butt up against the tenon and smash its way through, isn't it? But then if you taper it (and assuming that the hole goes all the way through both pieces of stock) then at the far end you'll see a gap all around the dowel (since its been tapered)??

 

[Chris Knight]

Roger,
Drawboring was the traditional method of securing tenons in mortices (in addition to any glue that may have been used but which often wasn't especially in framing green timber).

In this method, a hole was drilled through at least one side of the mortice face and partway into the other. Another hole, offset from the first by about 1/16 of an inch or a shade less (maybe as little as a 32nd in kiln dried hardwood), was drilled through the tenon so that in hammering a tapered peg through the mortice hole(s) the tenon was drawn tighter into the mortice and the shoulders were pressed hard against the (stile in your case).

These days with modern glues, I think it is quite acceptable to peg a tenon after gluing, simply by drilling through the stile mortice/tenon and inserting a suitable peg (which can be a pre-made dowel or a shaped piece of the parent timber. In the last set of garden furniture I made, this is what I did, although I topped off the dowels with larger plugs of the Iroko I had used for the furniture.

These pegs may be designed to appear decorative but in any case, in outdoors woodwork they serve the useful purpose of adding strength where it's needed as the timber moves around. If you look at older joinery books (see Ellis for example) painstaking steps to avoid water ingress into joints was taken for joinery exposed to the weather (often by rather complicated joints). These days we don't bother much, relying instead on waterproof glues. However, the wood still moves and many so-called waterproof glues are merely resistant to water. Thus a second line of defence in the form of a pegged tenon in this case, can really help.

 

[RogerS]

I've just realised that I never finished the tale of the garden gate.

I took on board the recommendation for the position of the top rail. However, on re-reading the earlier thread am embarassed to confess that I totally forgot about dowelling the joints as Chris suggested. Ah well..time will tell. I also have to confess that time prevented me adopting Chris's other suggestion re cold laminating.

Several more mistakes to own up to. First was with the t&g. Because my car is luggage-space challenged, when I went to Travis Perkins to buy the t&G I took my saw to cut it to length. All the same length So when I came to dry fit it I realised that some were too short.

Other projects (non-woodwork) took over my time and so it was a few weeks before I was able to go and get the replacement t&g. While I was there I also realised I needed the wood for the rails. One option was to cut down some stock 75x75 but thought that a waste (as it's earmarked for another project) and so decided to get some from TP. I remembered the inside dimension between the stiles and found some pieces at TP that were close. Yet again....mistake...completely forgot to add the length of the (quite long) tenons...and so when I got back found the rails too short.

Then I remembered loose tenons....simple solution but not as satisfying as a proper mortice and tenon.

Dry-fitting the t&g revealed that t&g is not all the same. Some of the new boards were thicker (slightly) than the early stock ..not too much of a problem. The marginally more difficult problem was that the tongues and grooves were also different and so would not fit into each other. Easy to open up on the WoodRat but a bit fiddly.

I rounded over the top corners of gate as I felt that a square corner looked wrong...but having done that..it still looked wrong. My wife put her finger on what the problem was...namely that the flow of the curve 'wants' to go on further ..if you see what I mean. putting the gate alongside the two gateposts.which will be cut off to the same height as the bottom of the curve..gives that 'extended flow' and it looks OK. Pity I rounded the corners off!

So, rebate cut for the t&g using a chunky bearing guided cutter from Wealden in the Makita (boy, is that a nice router to use)

but carried me a way a bit at one point...

The finished frame looks pretty good and ready for priming before fitting the t&g

I primed all surfaces before fitting the t&g, ran a router along the bottom edge of the boards to get a nice clean cut and it's now all ready for final screwing together and painting.

It does way a ton and so the post fits inside a large metal post holder from metpost..concreted into the ground and an old concrete lintel carries lateral load from this metpost to the one on the other side..so hopefully no droop!

Final picture to come when it's installed onsite.

What have I learned? Well, don't rely on memory. And stopping and starting projects is NOT a good idea.

Roger