In late summer I got an inquiry asking if I was
interested in taking a look at repairing or making a replacement for an old
wooden courtyard gate that had seen better days. Since I had nothing planned, we set up a time
to meet and do an evaluation of the existing gate shown below. At first glance it looked like there was just
a missing piece along with some rotted infill panels both of which could be
repaired. However, upon closer
inspection the rot was not limited to the infill panels but had gotten into the
structural elements. There were also
some cracked framing members that when all considered made the gate a candidate
for replacement rather than repair.
Fortunately, the jambs attached to the courtyard wall were in good shape
and could be reused.
After taking measurements I did some research sending
them about 20 different images of potential styles and designs. That list quickly got narrowed down to a
handful and the decision was made to keep the same general style of the gate
but add some ornamentation to the infill panels. More discussion ensued with a decision to add
the Zia sun symbol. In pure form it is a
circle with groups of rays pointing in four directions, representing the four
seasons, four cardinal directions, or the four stages of life. It’s from the Zia Pueblo people of New Mexico. The symbol is featured on the New Mexico state flag and gets applied to all
sorts of things. Everything from
clothes, to lights, jewelry and stained glass.
With the general parameters set I made a drawing or
should I say several drawings exploring a bunch of different options for using
the Zia. As I say, “The good thing about
a custom design is you can have anything you want and the bad thing is you can
have anything you want.” You just have
to work through all the options and decide what that is. Below are some of the options looked at.
The final design or mostly final design settled on is
shown below on the left. The X-ray
drawing on the right shows an exploded view and in it the tenons and mortices
can be seen. My guess is that the
drawing is about 95% done. Now there may
be some changes regarding the infill panel’s tenons and mortises. I guess I should say constructions details
will change as the build process evolves as they always do. I also need to double check the gate height
and more importantly its width before the cutting gets started.
Because we wanted the gates to be rot resistant that limited us to a few material choices.
- Pressure treated construction lumber is really wet. For 1½” thick material to dry I would like to allow at least 9 months and that’s so short only because we live in an arid desert climate. Additionally, when drying it can display all sorts of problems like warp, twist, cup split and kink plus it generally has flaws like knots that are really unacceptable in this application.
- White oak is a possibility but it costs quite a bit and it’s pretty heavy with a specific gravity of about .75.
- Cypress or Redwood are good choices with a specific gravity of about .4. They are naturally rot resistant; light somewhat expensive and decent material is not available around here. I could order some but who knows what it would look like which is why I insist on sorting through materials stacks and picking my own pieces out.
- Cedar
is a good rot resistant choice with a specific gravity of about .35 but is not
available locally in the thickness needed.
However, rough surface cedar fencing boards 5/8” thick by 5 ½” wide and
6’ long are locally available allowing us to sort through and pick good
boards. The down side is they are not
dry and will have to set to dry out before using. We went to the local big box store and spent
a few hours sorting through their stock pulling out flat, straight grained
material with minimal small defects. We
ended up with 37 pieces after sorting through about 450 boards. Here they are stacked up to dry with spacers
between each board to allow airflow around them to minimize uneven drying.
Right after stacking the boards their moisture content
got checked and it registered 45.7% which is really wet with water making up
much of the weight of the board. Here
are the moisture meter readings at initial testing on left, two weeks in the
center and five weeks on the right with it down to less than 6% which is
great. One advantage to living in the
desert where the humidity is frequently in the single digits. The boards being relatively thin also helped speed the drying process.
After about a month the boards got moved from the wood
storage area into the shop. They then
got restacked and checked for any problem children that were no longer flat,
straight and true. Surprisingly, there
was only one board that had any real problems.
In the top photo the red arrows indicate how much its warped. The inset measures it at a little over
¾”. The bottom photo illustrates how I
am trying to remove the warp. It may
work since the board is not completely dry and I am not real confident of
success but nothing ventured nothing gained.
One drawback in using cedar fence boards is that they are
not surfaced smooth. The photo shows the
roughness of the boards in their current state.
They aren’t as rough as regular rough sawn hardwood planks but not as
smooth as needed for gluing or for a finished surface. The first step will be to run them through a
planer taking off the minimum needed to get a surface suitable for gluing.
Next Up – Surfacing & Truing One Edge
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