Wood and wire gate

[Eric Holst]

I'm planning to build a simple wood frame gate with a heavy gauge hog wire center. Dimensions will be about 5 'x 5'square (outside dimension). This will be a double gate spanning our driveway.

I'll be starting with a supply of reclaimed 2x6 redwood, old stuff with tight grain - really nice. My thought is to use half lap joints at the four corners, perhaps with pegs. The laps would be across the width of the 6" boards (resulting in 6" by 6" long grain to long grain glue joint). The hog wire will be stapled into a 1/2" rabbet in the back of the frame.

Any opinions on whether this frame will be strong enough to hold the weight of the frame plus the hog wire and avoid racking?

[Stephen Musial]

I would imagine that as long as the hog wire is stout enough and secured to the wood very securely, it will keep the gate from racking. You might have to use a larger rabbet (~3" ?)to get a good enough connection but you could then overlay a piece of wood to give it a nice finished look.

[Jamie Buxton]

Yes, that should be a strong panel.

If you can manage the joinery, you might make the upper lap joints so that the stile doesn't carry all the way through the rail. This will avoid having end-grain look up at the rain. Water gets wicked into end-grain more than it does face-grain.

[Jamie Buxton]

The soft spot in many outdoor gate projects is not the gate, but rather the post the gate hangs on. You'll have a big lever trying to pull that post over, so it needs to be stout, and placed firmly in the ground. Or sometimes you can embed triangulation in fences which attach to it.

[Eric Holst]

I was thinking of using a steel post embedded in concrete and then trimming around the post to give the appearance of it being a wood post.

[Jamie Buxton]

One more thought... If you can turn the hog panel so the wires run on the diagonal instead of up/down and left-right, that will make the gate much stronger against racking.

[Eric Holst]

Thanks for your helpful feedback. I'll try to post photos when I'm through (might be a while...).