I'll be showing you how to build a picket gate. The equipment you need, you need some
pickets. You need a gate frame. You need some posts. You need some concrete, a shovel, spirit
level, a saw. You need drill drivers. You need your safety gear, a sawhorse. You need
some screws.
First thing I'll be doing now is putting the two posts in for the gate. We will be setting
them in concrete so we will need to let them dry at least 24 hours.
The next thing I'm gonna be doing is using a square to transfer a line from the brick
wall to the fence. Now usually a square might not be long enough to reach the fence, so
a little tip is just to run a picket along this edge of the square, and you can mark
it off on your fence when your square's flush on the brick wall. And these two marks are
now where I'll be putting the face of my two gate posts. My next step will be to dig the
post holes on both sides.
Now that we've got our holes dug, I'll be mixing the concrete. For these posts, we'll
be using the quick-set concrete so there's gonna be 20 minutes of working time, and it'll
set hard enough so the following morning you're gonna hang your gates.
I've now mixed the concrete, so I will be putting the post into the hole. I've got the
post on the mark, on the brick wall. I'm just leveling it up now. I'm holding it firm up
under the brick. Okay, so I've got my one post in now. Now I'm back to the second post,
and this one will go in deep. Using the spirit level, I will level it up again. The posts
are in. Now we will let them sit. I will recommend 24 hours.
So this post was put in last night, so now we will be drilling our holes in the post
for the Dynabolts, and we'll be countersinking the Dynaboltsmaybe
30 mm so we can get it. It is a hundred mm Dynabolts so we can get it firmly
into the brick, and that will firm our post to hang a gate off.
So first I'll be marking three spots in the middle of the brick because that's where we
get the strongest fix. So now I have marked that on my post where I'm to drill my holes,
so the next thing I'll be doing is using my 25 mm spade bit to countersink approximately
30 mm into the post.
The next thing I will be doing is drilling my hole through the post. I have put a pencil
mark on the drill bit which is just short of going through the whole post, and that
way as I'm drilling I can see my pencil mark coming up, and I can stop drilling before
I hit the brickwork.
I will be now using my hammer drill with my 10 mm masonry bit to drill holes into the
brick from my 10 mm Dynabolts. The Dynabolts is 100 mm long, and
since our counter sunk 30 mm into the post, we will get enough depth into the brick to
hold it firmly.
Now that I have drilled my three holes, I can get my Dynabolts and hammer
it into the hole and tie that up with my socket set. The next step now is to measure the difference
between the posts. I'll measure it top and bottom to make sure I've got a fairly square
opening. That measurement determines the length of the horizontal bars of the gate, and next
step will be to measure and cut on all three horizontal parts so we can put the gate together.
Now that we have cut our three horizontal rows, it's just a matter of assembling it
together. Now it's just a matter of putting some of the screws supplied with the gate.
Based on the surface that we are doing on our pathway, we determined that the picket
height should be around about there. The gate frame will sit just under the collar of the
picket head, so I've pencil marked the little spot on the post. Now I know where to hold
the gate frame as I screw it up.
After putting my first screw in, I now put a spirit level on. Make sure I can get the
gate frame quite straight, and then I'll put my next screw, just one there in the bottom
as well. Now I can adjust it a little bit. I can bring the bottom out a little bit more
to keep the gap a little bit more even.
Now that my hinges are screwed to the post, I'm gonna lift the gate off the hinges, take
it over to my sawhorses, and we will screw the pickets under the gate frame.
After clamping my first picket in place, I've worked out my spacings with the view of finishing
with a full picket, and we've ended up with about a 50 mm gap. The thickness of the picket
is 65 mm. A 50 mm gap means that I mark off at every 80 mm.
Before I screw a picket stand, I'm using a drill with a countersinker on it, and that
stops the hardwood pickets from splitting as I screw it down. Now I will lay my pickets
out, and as I screw them and drill them, I'm moving to my little mark that I've marked
out.
I have now screwed my top pickets on, so I will be doing the bottom ones there. I've
got a line the same as I did at the top, and I've drawn a line down the middle so I can
get a straight line with the screw holes there because the pickets will then already be in
place.
You would notice as I screw them on I pull them up to my little line marking so I know
that the gap's gonna be the same every time.
So now I'm just gonna hang my gate, and one of the last things before I put ledges
on is to cut the tops of my post. I normally cut the post off about 2 cm above
the heart of the pickets. Now that both posts are marked, it's time to get my saw and cut
the top of the post. Because of the heart of the post, it's probably better not to use
a circular saw.
So that's it. That's how you build a picket gate.