Sapele Side Gate

Looks fantastic! I hope it holds up well outdoors… I must say I’ve never heard of using sapele for fencing! What’s next…. a cocobolo deck? :-)

-- Charlie M. "Woodworking - patience = firewood"

It looks very professional. Good job.

-- Dan I.G.N.

Thanks Charlie,

Where I live in the UK, the only hardwoods you can buy locally are Oak or Sapele. These two woods are the main woods used for window frames, front doors, etc. I must admit that since this is my first project with Sapele, I keep going to look at it when its hot, cold, rainy, etc, to see how much the wood has moved. I’m really impressed with the drawbored joinery. It’s a heavy gate and the joints have remained really tight.

-- Andy -- Old Chinese proverb say: If you think something can't be done, don't interrupt man who is doing it.

Nice, almost too nice to be an outside gate!

-- Jim, Nebraska

NICE GATE
Its cool to see the difference between filling the grain and not filling the grain. I would say with a full shop i’d be happy with a product like that, but done just on a workmate that shows nice skill.

Thanks for the comments guys.

VerteramoFurniture7, it was definitely a challenge building something this big and heavy on a Workmate, even though I had an auxiliary roller stand as well. I found the trick to sawing the tenon shoulders was to wobble in time with the bench. :-) It’s going to be such a pleasure to work on a proper bench when I finally get to build it.

-- Andy -- Old Chinese proverb say: If you think something can't be done, don't interrupt man who is doing it.

Well done, Brit. You designed and built a very nice gate! The pine posts match the sapele very well, too.

-- "hold fast to that which is good"

fantastic color and a job well done.

-- keeping myself entertained

Great-Gate!

You should be very pleased; the gate is beautiful!

-- Rick, Tennessee, John 3:16

Nice gate. Can you please share the dimensions? What is the diameter of the arch? Thanks.

-- tim hill www.newcalshop.com

Hi Tim, sorry for the delay in replying, I’ve been away on business. Of course I’ll share the dimensions. Do you use Sketchup? If not, I’ll draw it out for you. Let me know and I’ll upload the details.

-- Andy -- Old Chinese proverb say: If you think something can't be done, don't interrupt man who is doing it.

Tim – The gate is 1750mm high x 970mm wide. It is 45mm thick. The rails and stiles are 145mm wide.

Here is the arch as I drew it in Sketchup.

I drew a series of vertical dotted lines and transferred the measurements of where each dotted line bisected the top arc to a sheet of 8mm MDF 480mm x 290mm (half the arc). Then I used this bow to join the dots on the MDF template. I cut the half arc out with a jigsaw and drew round it onto the dry assembled stiles and top rail. Then I flipped it over and drew round it again. I now had the top arc marked on the stiles and top rail, so I cut it out with the jigsaw. Next I used this hastily made tool to draw the inner arc which ensured it was equi-distant from the outer arc. It looked right so I knocked the stiles and rail apart and cut out the inner arc with the jigsaw.

Using this method, I didn’t need to swing a big arc with a trammel or be concerned about accurately finding the centre of the circle. The arc looked right on the Sketchup drawing, so I was confident it would look right on the gate.

-- Andy -- Old Chinese proverb say: If you think something can't be done, don't interrupt man who is doing it.

Thanks Brit… yes, I use sketchup. Out here in the colonies we still use the imperial measures so I’ll have to do some converting. :) So, after converting the width and height of the outer and inner arcs to imperial, god save the queen, and using one of the millions of handy on-line conversion calculators, I came up with an outer radius of 21.6” or 548.63mm, and an inner radius of 18.48” or 469.39mm. It is a hot day in Sacramento so I’m hiding indoors and doing my geek thing. The gate is about 38” wide x 69” tall with about 5.7” stiles.

Maybe to other folks a gate is just a gate, but here on Lumber Jacques it is a work of art. Nice job. Thanks for all the info.

-- tim hill www.newcalshop.com

Actually Tim, I think the outer radius would be more like 27.3” and the inner radius 21.6” which would make the rail width 5.7”. Like I said though, I didn’t swing an arc, I plotted it. I’m old enough to be comfortable working in either imperial or metric, but since the wood I bought was sold by the metre, I went with metric on this project.

-- Andy -- Old Chinese proverb say: If you think something can't be done, don't interrupt man who is doing it.