Recently, I've been working on a gate for our front porch to keep the dogs in. We're currently jury-rigging a baby gate. Anyways, here's the gate dry-fit. It's made of white oak from our property that we milled after it fell down. BTW, all the joints are mortise and tenoned including all of the balusters. I'll peg the four corners when all is said and done. It should last a lifetime and then some. Pay no attention to the blood spots on the right hand post. "It was merely a flesh wound." They will come out when I sand and finish it.
Good that you have the will, the tools, and the skills for these projects. You will back with pride and a honest sense of accomplishment.
I've always said it isn't a project around here if there isn't any blood drawn - must be the same for you Gate looks good and it will be so much more convenient than a baby gate. Had the same thing at my last house; baby gate at the stairs to the deck. Sometimes one of strong but stupid dogs would crash thru it going after a squirrel (or for no particular reason at all). A real, wooden gate like yours was just the ticket. Just be aware, that bears will use it as a bounding point if they are panicked by you opening the slider while they are eating out of the bird feeder - wouldn't be bad except the hinges will get bent (easy fix anyway). Or if the gate is left unlatched for some reason, said bear will bump it so it swings open, and wait for it to almost close, bump it so it swings open then wait for it to almost close etc - apparently they like to play just before eating bird seed .
Really nice job Mike. Pegging it should hold it together for a long time. What finish do you plan to use? Ok, bogie......there's a much larger story there.
Early morning (pre-dawn) shenanigans of bears is all. That, and my unwillingness to bring in bird feeders until I have positive proof that the local bears are up and at em
The gate itself is now finished and the wheels are mounted on the bottom. Here it is in place (temporary). Now I need to engineer up some guides for it to slide through at the post on the right and a mechanism to lock it to the wall on the left. I thought I had that figured out, but now I see my original ideas aren't going to work. Time to put the that 4 semesters of mechanical engineering school in the '80's to work. P.S. there were plenty of good reasons that I left that career path.
Wheels - huh, that is interesting - not in a bad way, just nothing I've ever thought of before for this type of gate. I think around here during winter they would be a bit of a problem, but I do see that it offers good support and easy moving without it swinging wildly when pushed open. You've obviously put a lot of thought into it!
The geometry doesn't work at all for a swinging gate, hard to explain, but trust me. Thanks for the support bogieb
God I'm an idiot - I still thought it was a swinging-type gate and had a hard time figuring out how it worked. Now that the light bulb is blazing forth, I see what you did there . Making perfect sense to me now .
Mike, mount some heavy duty full extension drawer slides and be done. "They" make some that are quite large.
