We at Mitech Joinery Take our 26 years experience and put it into every aspect of what we do.
Joinery Techniques
The main points below are just basic insights into some of the ideas and practisers that go into our gate manufacturing process.
They have been developed over the years of making gates and trying to find the most beneficial techniques to implement.
If the gates you are looking at don’t have these practices in them, then it will explain potential price differences and why gates fail very early in their life span.
The two main elements that effect a gate are weather and strength. These two factors have to be taken into consideration as much as economically achievable. In other categories of the website we have spoken about timber and what benefits come with hardwood. The need for the correct type of finish (Stain,paint or oil). Joinery methods now come into play.
All gates must be manufactured with a full through mortice and tenon.Thats a tenon that goes through the full width of the vertical gate style and then has wedges driven down the sides to wedge it into position along with a water proof glue.This is the main basis of which the wooden gates are held together. Next come the correct timber sizes in the correct position.
Hanging styles should always be heavy in section as possible, where the meeting style should be fairly
light in section, as to keep the weight down in the center of the gate. Bare Faced cross rails should be at least 6inches wide and should have a 16 degree pitch to cast the water off (Very important!). If you have a straight Top rail this also should either be weather angled or have a weather capping to cover it.
Boards can come in two commonly used sizes 14mm finish or 19mm finish. We commonly use 14mm as to keep the weight down on some of the larger gates and find very little problems with them. If the board have to span over greater unsupported distances then you would be better to use the thicker board to keep stability. We nail and glue all our boards down to encourage stability,but it still allows the boards to swell and contract with out to much trouble.
Where the board meets the bottom rail on automated gates there is a gap left as you can see in the below picture
to allow water to be relieved from the rebait, the rebait also has a 16 degree pitch to encourage this process. If you are going to stain the gates then the end of the boards will need sealing on installation to stop the boards sucking up moisture and going black later on.
I hope this demonstrates some of the thought that goes into our gates and that at no point should you think “I just want a pair of gates”.
The correct thought and research should go into them to ensure trouble gate usage for the years to come.
