Garden gates
When i say garden gate, what i am refering to is a gate about 3ft wide and 3ft or maybe 4ft tall
Where to start, a gate is normally a rectangular frame with upright bars in it. Of course there are alternative options, it would not be much of a tutorial in designing your own gate if i didnt show a few of the possible options available.
The frame
The left most image is perhaps the most common, the standard rectangular frame. no detail or design on the top but we will get into those further down the page. The second one, i couldn’t decide if, it was just top decoration or a frame. It made it into the frame category. This is nothing more than a half circle 250mm or 300mm tall, allowing the use of standard scrolls to form a pattern. The half circle is made from the same size steel as the frame is made from.
The third and fourth are the same. When i say the same what they are is a curve that falls short of the full width of the frame, to make up the width to flat piece of steel are welded on. This gives what I call a shoulder. The obvious difference is that they are “flipped” one pointing up to give a rise in the gate and the other pointing down to give a dip in the gate.
There are of course other options, but these are the more simple ones, that can be produced relatively easily and cheaply. You have to decide which one you prefer
Top decoration
The second drawing is its own top decoration, after it is just a rectangular frame. With a half circle on top. it doesn’t really leave much room to do anything else. The third and the forth one are only really suitable to either leave plain or use decorative railing heads. As decorative railing heads are common to gates and railings, i will have those on their own reference page. So that just leaves the plain rectangular frame to deal with
Left is the standard rail head top decoration, middle is a pair of scrolls with a ring in the middle and the right is just a pair of scrolls. any of these 3 are simple to make and can be used as a top decoration on a rectangular frame.
Inside the frame.
Before we get into bar decoration, we need to look inside the outer frame and decide if you want to do something a little different.
Starting from the left: A secondary horizontal bar is welded 100mm from the top, the vertical bars can either stop at the secondary horizontal bar or pass through them continuing to the outer frame. This now creates a gap. That gap can now be infilled with a designs. It could be laser cut steel letters to spell out a house name or just a number of the house. What ever takes your fancy that you can fit in the gap.
The second one is just the first but upside down. The third is a gap at top and a gap at bottom. The fourth is setting a gap through the centre of the gate to fill with a design, The fifth has all three options, top, middle and bottom. The last is just a plain bar set through the middle, this is common place in taller gates to add strength but can be used in shorter ones if required.
Just to point out, the top gap can be done to follow the rise frame and the dip frame, but this is more time consuming than a flat bar. Of course the middle or bottom bars are just flat bar so easy to do.
I don’t want to get into any real detail on how to fit the gaps on this page, because this is something that is common to all types of gate. It deserves its own page.