Driveway gate

[Gene Davis]

My brother-in-law saw this design on YouTube (hat tip to Doug the architect) and wants to do it at his driveway entry. I sketched it up in Sketchup to work out the details.

The lazy-K bracing is more interesting than plain old diags or Xs.

Scale of things is for a 12' width roadway through it. 6x6 anchor posts stick up 4' out of the ground, and are about 16 feet between. Hardware is from HooverFence.com.

Up on the 3D Warehouse now. Search for FARM GATE and you will find.

[Dave Richards]

Nice work Gene. The gate seems to be missing something. What about doing something to the tops of the verticals at the center to echo those curves on the outer posts? Maybe like this.



I think the straps on the bottom gudgeons should be longer.

By the way, I added the joinery on the vertical posts and corrected the reversed faces.

[Jamie Buxton]

Usually what happens with time is that the posts start to lean inwards. They spend their entire life with the weight of the gate trying to make them lean. Gravity almost always wins. If this gate is in a fence, you can add diagonal bracing in the fence to hold the posts. Or maybe you can anchor the post to some other structure, like a house.
When you see this kind of gate in the Old-West movies, the posts are tall, and there's a pole going from the top of one post to the top of the other. That's not for decoration. It prevents the posts from leaning inwards.