WIP driveway gate (update 25 oct)

[head clansman]

hi

hows it going , nice to see it started , looking good , Chris seeing you had your timber some time it has discoloured a bit, don't forget to shoot and clean up all face and edges before gluing up, plane back the colour rather than rely on sanding the natural colour back .hc

 

[Chris_belgium]

Chris, don't worry about asking a question! I am speaking from experience as I used this technique on my workbench, made entirely from beech. 1mm offset didn't pull the joints up enough so, on the next set of joints, I increased it to 2mm and it worked brilliantly! :wink:

I did manage to split some 3"x2" softwood once though, and that was with a 2mm offset... To be honest, it was cheap stuff and I wouldn't expect the same to happen with a half-decent hardwood (tapering the ends slightly really does help!).

`

Thanks, that put's my mind at ease a bit I'll think I'll make some test pieces from the offcuts I have.

 

[Chris_belgium]

hi

hows it going , nice to see it started , looking good , Chris seeing you had your timber some time it has discoloured a bit, don't forget to shoot and clean up all face and edges before gluing up, plane back the colour rather than rely on sanding the natural colour back .hc

Yes, I've had the wood for over three years now.

Planing the aphselia long grain is no problem, it planes very nice even without an expensive/fettled plane. End grain is a whole other story tough!!!

What do you mean by shooting and cleaning all edges? You mean the tenon face?

 

[head clansman]

hi Chris

no no , i mean shoot all timber face & edges with a jack plane ( rails stile mullions the lot ) to clean it up, to restore the colour back into it before you glue it together . hc

 

[Chris_belgium]

Its a very old technique called Draw Boring. I'm sure Olly has done it as he's been studying furniture making for 2 years now.

Lovely progress being made. The wealdon cutter is something I've thought about investing in. Looking at your pictures I'd say the cut was pretty damn good. I would test it on some good hardwood next and see what sort of finish you get I'm sure it would be the perfection you were hoping to see.

I've reread my text about the cutter and it is a bit negative, the cutter is a really great cutter, have done all the routing ivolved with this build with this one cutter and it still goes strong! No smoke, no burn marks, only that hairy edge, but it might just be inexperienced me who has unreal expectations from this cutter.

I will definately be ordering more cutters from wealden!!!

 

[Chris_belgium]

Update

Finally done with alle the mortice and tenon joints, and offcourse everything went ok until I test fitted the last one. Wood split while I forced the tenon in, I know I shouldn't of forced it, but it was the last one and was a bit fed up with it

Anyway, i'm thinking of putting a big screw in from the back and then plugging the hole.

Did a test fit, everything lined up ok, a couple of m&t joints had a small gap, but this is due to the rails not being perfectly straight, when some clamping force is applied they close up nicely, except one wich is open for 0.5mm wich is a result I can live with. Also measured the diagonals wich are only 4mm different again, on a 5000mm gate this is a result I can live with!

Also made a test m&t to decide what offset to use for the dowels, and as OPJ suggested 3mm is the offset wich works the best. Not too much force needed to drive the peg in and the m&t closes up nicely.

Left the tenon full width, that way I could test a couple of different offsets.

No dowel

Dowel in place, there is something very satisfiying to see the m&t close up 'perfectly' while driving the dowel in

Hoping to have all the boards cut to length and routed this week so I can assmeble everything next week.

 

[Chris_belgium]

Do you guys think I need to fit some diagonals in the framework? Bear in mind this is a rolling gate, so very little diagonal force will be applied to the frame!

Thanks.

 

[Boz62]

This big woodwork is so impressive .

From an engineering perspective I don't think you need a diagonal as long as the rail it runs on is solid, that will take all the vertical forces. I would however be tempted to temporarily fit a length of wood or steel, corner to corner, while you are moving it in the workshop and installing it. Perhaps have a decorative "feature" at the corners so you can clamp/bolt on a diagonal beam when working on it?

Good luck

Boz

 

[Chris_belgium]

This big woodwork is so impressive .

From an engineering perspective I don't think you need a diagonal as long as the rail it runs on is solid, that will take all the vertical forces. I would however be tempted to temporarily fit a length of wood or steel, corner to corner, while you are moving it in the workshop and installing it. Perhaps have a decorative "feature" at the corners so you can clamp/bolt on a diagonal beam when working on it?

Good luck

Boz

The gate rolls on three wheels. I'm gonna try to run it without a rail, just heavy duty rubber wheels on my driveway. This way I do not have to cut into my new and expensive ( I know I know, should've put the rail in when I had the driveway done, but forgot about it ) driveway. I'll put in some longer bolts to hold the wheels, and if all goes to ratshit, I can always replace the wheels with metal grooved ones and put a rail in my driveway.

 

[OPJ]

Pleased to see the draw-boning technique worked well. :wink:

If you're worried about that split (bad luck! ) then, I'd advise you to rout it out and glue in a strip of wood, which should prevent it from ever getting any worse... I've done this a few times myself! :shock:

 

[Chris_belgium]

Pleased to see the draw-boning technique worked well. :wink:

If you're worried about that split (bad luck! ) then, I'd advise you to rout it out and glue in a strip of wood, which should prevent it from ever getting any worse... I've done this a few times myself! :shock:

Think I'll go with the screw, the split is in the end of one of the 5000mm beams, wich means I'd have to route it vertically, that would be near impossible for me to achieve a nice result.

 

[Chris_belgium]

new update

All the filler boards cut to length, and then route the groove for the 'tongue, groove' joint with the bottom rail.

Dry fit:

As you can see, I still need to clean up all the wood to get a uniform colour. Spoilt myself and ordered one of these to get the job done

Cleaning up the wood and drilling the holes in the tenons for the drawbore pins is all that's left to do, hoping to get it finished next weekend.

Next thing is constructing the posts/piles? I've ordered three square steel beams, 2000mm long, 250mm wide and thickness is 8mm, should be plenty strong! Question now is how to attach the wood to the piles to disguise that they are steel. I'm thinking of making a square box out of wood slightly oversize and just slide it over the steel beams? Maybe weld a small lip at the bottom of the steel piles to keep the wood clear of the ground/moisture? Any toughts?

 

[Chris_belgium]

Small update

Fixed the crack in the top rail as to OPJ's recommendations, I'm gonna have to start paying you a consultants fee with all the tips I'm gettin' of you

I was thinking of buying 6 bessey clamps to do the glue up, but after seeing the price on those things, I decided to improvise with some stuff I had laying around.

 

[Chris_belgium]

What an overwhelming response anyways, here is a big update:

Planed all the filler planks by hand, had a big struggle with the aphselia, it took the sharpness of the blade very very fast. I've addes a 10° back bevel to the blade and that helped a lot.Plane was set to a rather deep cut so it took of the grey in one pass, this left me with little lines in the wood wich I then removed with a belt sander, final sanding will be wit orbital sander. Maybe a crude method but works fast and when doing 22 110cm by 14cm planks, speed is a important factor!

Clifton hard at work

Cleaned up the edges of the planks with a shoulder plane.

Then the boring job of making 24 dowels for the drawbore joints. I've made them using a dowel plate and was dissapointed with the result, for projects in the future, I will order premade dowels online, will save me lot of time and leave me with a far better quality dowel!

And then finally zero hour, ready for glue up. So many things that can go wrong, but in the end all my worries for the glue up were not necessary as everything went together smooth without problems.

Glue up was done in two parts first part was glueing the stiles into the bottom rails, another BIG advantage of using the drawbore joint, is the need for little to no clamps, the dowels pull the joint nice and tight.

Glue used was West Systems epoxy, with silica filler. Great stuff to work with and if you use the slow hardener, you have 90 minutes to clamp everything together.

Epoxy + hardener

Silica powder added, you just add as much or as little as you want, the more you add, the thicker the glue gets, ideal for a vertical joint, the glue doesn't run down.

Mixed up, you can see on the test piece to the side that the glue doens't run down.

Everything in place, top rail ready in the chain block, joints taped up to prevent glue spillage, but in the end proved to be unnecessary since you can plane away the hardened epoxy when cleaning up the joint.
Had to get creative with some ropes to get the filler planks in place for glue up.

Joint nice and tight before dowels

Dowels in place, a little bit more squeeze out, so the offset dowel hole technique worked perfectly!

Since the rails weren't perfectly straight they needed clamping before the dowels could be inserted. My home made clamps worked perfectly.

Final cleaning:

Cleaned up joint, I am very happy with the result!

All that's left now is to plane/send the entire thing, and mount the wheel and then I can start on the posts.

Will keep you guys updated!

 

[Boz62]

Oh wow, I'll never complain about a large glue-up again :shock:. Very impressive work, Chris.

Boz

 

[Geno]

Great job so far!

Hope you're going to get some help when it comes to hanging it!

Thats a handy wee solution for your metal bench - trailer jockey wheels for rising and moving it! Might just use that one myself!! Cheers!

 

[Fecn]

Excellent work Chris - I'm very impressed with your glue-up Can't wait to see it in place.

 

[Paul Chapman]

Looking good, Chris.

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[Chris_belgium]

Next update

Cutting and jackhammering into my newly laid (2y ago) driveway with a disc grinder made me feel a bit uneasy but had to be done

Hard at work

Lengthened the metal post by welding U profile to the bottom. Saved me some money on the metal, the shop I go you have buy 6m lengths of steel, since the posts need to be 165cm above to ground, that would only leave me with 35 cm to put in the ground. So I welded the U steel on, lengthening them so I can put them 80 cm into the ground. Might be overkill, but I'd rather be a lot too deep than just slightly shallow

Posts + rail in place

Finishing up the gate, put the wheels in place, drilled a stopped hole (hopefully this makes sense? ) put the wheel and axle in, then epoxied a plug in the wood to hide the hole but also to keep the axle in place. Hopefully this is strong enough, should be as there is no side load on the pin.

Put a chamfer on the gate, first time I've used the fixed base for my router, before it was always mounted in my router table, must say for work like this it's very nice, nice and stable.

Stopped the chamfer 8cm from the corner as I didn't like the look of the chamfer continuing in the corner.

Test piece with a continuing chamfer:

Stopped chamfer

All that's left to do on the gate itself is plane/sand the dowels from the wheels flush and it's ready.

 

[Mattty]

:shock: Thats Huge! Very impressive scale of work mate. How the heck are you going to fit it!!??