help with gate design

[lennyzx11]

:thumbsup:


Morning Lenny..That was what I was thinking also
Sean

Morning to you Sean.

I saw one in Ontario last winter (slider).
The gentleman had fastened an ordinary plow share on the back end of the gate. A la locomotive cow catcher. It would flip the snow away from the rail and chain. Said it works really well as long as snow doesn't melt and refreeze.

 

[kirkawilson]

Here is an unusual one: Wooden Fence Lifts Upon Entrance - YouTube

 

[franklin2]

What you have now is all wood. I would think to keep that theme going whatever you build needs to be wood to match. Unless you want the old "farm" look with store bought metal tube or flat galvanized gates.

If you want something fancy and nice made out of metal, I think I would rip out what you have and take out 8 or 10 feet of the wooden fence on either side and fill it back in with metal that will match the metal gate. This would also give you the opportunity to incorporate a sliding mechanism into one or both sides if you wanted that style gate.

 

[flyerdan]

If you want to continue the 4 rail look, make the frames out of 1.5" square galvanized tubing. I've made tons of those frames, mostly for dogear fence boards but rails would work, just need to run some .125" or .1875" flat stock about 6" wide vertically to anchor the rails to at the ends and a couple in the middle. I'd go with the 1.875" round hinge posts, and make them 7+ feet high, that way you can run a truss rod or cable to the ends to true them up and support the extra weight. From the pictures, it looks like there might be about a 9 inch bias; that need to be measured and built in so one leaf won't be noticeably higher than the other.

 

[Cord]

If you could bend the top rail so the pole side is taller you'd create a more graceful design.

 

[erda]

Here is an unusual one: Wooden Fence Lifts Upon Entrance - YouTube

That is very interesting. Have to wonder how long it would last-seems like a lot of stress put on it when it "bounces" open and closed. I'd love to have better understanding of the mechanism.

 

[kirkawilson]

Here is another unpowered mechanical gate opener patented by Gandy at second link below:
Unpowered mechanical gate opener, the video | Make:
US3163947A - Automatic gate
- Google Patents

 

[City Farmer]

Have you thought about a vertical pivot gate? They have one at the storage unit and that thing goes up/down 100's of times per day without a problem.