My nephew, Max, is started to become more mobile
and so we need a gate here, now at the top
of the stairs, this is easy, cause you can just fold it
to the stairs, but here you can't fold it this way,
because the stairs are in the way, and there's no
mold to fold it against, so I want to come up with
some kind of parallelogram type gate
that folds up here. For material, I used a lot of
recycled lumber from my lumber rack,
and cut that into strips and rails that I needed.
So, here's how the baby gate should work.
When the gate is swung open, it's parallelized,
parallelogramed up the stairs,
and all of these slats are gonna tilt like that.
And I need to tilt up to 480 degrees.
So, I've got lot's of room in here, so this is gonna be
the bottom rail, these are gonna form the top rail,
and these slats are gonna be much longer.
And, then this gets clamped on here
with another thing on top, so that'll contain
all the bits, and make it look nice, and make it rigid.
So, I just had this over at my brothers for a fit check,
and the one thing we realized is
it's probably a bit too heavy, so I need to lighten
this somehow.
I couldn't plane anything off the outside
of those channels to make them lighter,
because these holes are drilled almost all the way
through, so if I shaved anything off,
they'd go through, so what I did instead,
is on this part, I just planed off on this side,
and for this part, I actually cut a layer out
from right here, with the table saw.
A pack of hinges I had lying around came with
these tiny little screws, and I thought
just to get a bit more hold, I would substitute
some number six screws instead,
but what happens is, with the hinges as they were,
the two number six screws, when the hinge folds
all the way together, would actually prevent
the hinge from folding together enough,
so I enlarged the holes, just by using
a larger drill and drilling partway into those holes.
So, this thing is gonna mount against the wall,
and the reason it's odd shaped like that is because
the stud actually runs here, in the house
so we can anchor it right into that.
And, what I have to be careful about is,
that this rail here, when it folds, is not gonna
gouge the walls, so if you imagine
this is the wall, it looks like I have clearance
across the whole range of motion.
OK, time for installation.
So, it fits this here, and just attaches with some
clamps over there, and it goes on there
like that, the stud is right here, so to get
a really good anchor, just gonna drill
through here, and through the drywall.
So, now I'm ready to put this back on,
and because I drilled directly where the stud is,
I don't need an anchor, which means I only need this
tiny little hole that's not gonna need as much of
a damage as an anchor, plus we get much more hold,
so two screws are gonna be more than enough
to hold this.
This piece here mounts these blocks,
which the gate hooks onto. I would have just
screwed those directly onto the bannister,
but Marcus really doesn't like me drilling holes in here,
so this reaches around, and I put the hole back here
where it's very unobtrusive.
So, it folds nicely either way.
Try rattle it really hard.
Come on, rattle it. Rattle it.
It's really strong.