Courtyard Gate – #13 Adding Edge Extension, Installing Latch Assembly, Strike Plate & Astragal

Adding the thin piece to one edge of the jamb stile is not as simple as cutting a piece the right size and gluing it on.  The drawing below shows where the new piece (in white) will be added to the existing stile.  The problem is since I have already rounded over all the edges if the new piece just gets glued on there is gap where they meet (red arrow) and that’s not acceptable.  To do it right the rounded edge has to be cut off before the new strip can be glued on.  Also, the existing hinge screw holes have to be transferred up from the existing edge to the new piece. 

The first step is to cut a strip that’s a bit wider than the gate.  That’s so I can trim the excess off making the new piece perfectly flush with the existing gate.  Doing it this way gives me a little leeway when gluing the strip on.  If I cut it to match the gate thickness then glued it on there is no margin for error.  The setup to transfer the hinge screw holes is to clamp a thin shim on either side of the stile which is done in the top photo.  The new strip is cut just a tiny bit narrower than the space between the clamp pads so it’s easy to slide in place.  If you are wondering what the red arrows point to, they are nails whose heads has been cut off leaving a point.  These points will transfer the screw location to the new strip.  In the bottom photo the new strip has been set into place and hammered down onto the existing stile and in the process the nails make a mark on the underside of the new strip transferring the hinge screw locations.

Taking the strip off and flipping it over it’s easy to see where the cut nails marked the center locations of the hinge screws.  They are then used to drill a pilot hole for later use.

Next is to cut the rounded edge of stile down to get a square edge.  The top photo shows the door supported by a roller stand so I can control the cut and end up with a straight smooth edge.  The pencil line in the bottom photo shows my rough mark of what gets cut off.  In reality it’s a little more, the red arrow points to the break point between the rounded edge and the flat surface.

With the rounded edge of the gate cut off the new edge strip can be glued on.  Type III glue is used along with a whole bunch of clamps shown in the left photo.  The right photo is a closer look where you can see how the strip overhangs by roughly 3/32”.

Once the glue cures the clamps are removed and a bottom bearing flush cutting router bit is used to trim the strip’s edge flush with the gate.  The photo shows the router setting on the new oversize edge strip with the bit set so the bearing rides against the gate allowing the carbide cutting edges to trim the strip flush with the gate.

Trimming the gate’s width to its new final width is next and done the same way as when the rounded edge was cut off.  Once trimmed the square edge can be rounded over with the router.  Here is what part of the new strip looks like once the installation and routing is completed.

Installing the new stainless steel door handle mechanism shown in the left photo is next starting by drilling two holes; the borehole and edge bore shown in the drawing on the right. 

Measuring and double checking for the location of the borehole for the handle assembly is done because if it gets drilled in the wrong place that’s a real problem.   Once the layout is done and triple checked the hole gets drilled using a hole saw in the drill press.  It’s cut about ¾ of the way through then the door is flipped over to finish cutting.  Cutting from both sides reduces the chance of splintering the backside when the hole saw breaks through.

The edge bore is drilled with a spade bit using a guide block (red arrow) whose hole is made with the same spade bit.  It helps keep me to drill the hole level and square to the edge of the door.

Because the latch assembly is set flush with the edge of the door a square flat-bottomed recess has to be cut.  Rather than trying to do this with hand chisels I built the jig shown in the top photo.  It consists of two “L” shaped pieces that clamp to the door so the latch assembly is centered and the plate just fits in the jig’s opening shown in the bottom photo.  The small router is used to cut the recess the same way as what was planned for the hinge pockets.

The only drawback with making the recess this way is that the corners are rounded rather than being square shown in the top left photo.  That’s not a problem if the piece being installed has rounded corners but in this case the latch plate has square corners.  Even so it’s easy to square up the corners with a chisel and install the latch.

At this point we mounted the doors back in the opening to check the final fitting.  Almost everything looked good except a little problem with the bottom hinges.  Because the jamb wasn’t quite plumb, we added a thin aluminum shim to bring the bottom hinge more in line with the top two.   With the door fitting the center of the strike plate is marked to line up with the latch assembly.  A modification of the latch assembly jig is used along with the router so the strike plate could be flush mounted.

About this time the owners were discussing the final painting color combination of the gates as having the body match the house trim and the Zia as some shade of turquoise.  Based on that I put this image together of a photo and a rendering of the gate with those colors to give them some idea of what it would look like.

There is one last wood piece needed for the gates and that’s the astragal or the stop attached to the inactive door.  Here it gets attached to the left gate when looking from the inside.  The two drawings show where it will get attached with the right drawing having the right gate is slightly open. 

This piece start by gluing up a couple of 2” x 65” pieces done the same way as many of the other glue-ups using the Type III glue and a lot of clamps.  It’s then cut down to needed thickness, width and length followed by rounding over the exposed edges with the router and lastly gluing, clamping and nailing it to the door.

Here is the gate hung and all the active door hardware installed.  There will be a matching dummy handle installed on the right door after the door is painted.  The doors have not been painted yet because it’s late February and might be a bit before the weather cooperates.  Once that’s done, I will post an update.

It's been an interesting project that started way back in early October with the selection of the rough sawn, undried cedar.  Real construction did not start until into November after the boards had dried enough to be stable.  The drying time was so short because the boards were fairly thin and it's really dry here in the desert.  The build has been interesting and fun and I am glad I did it but it's a project that falls in the, "Once is enough" category.