Tag Archives: traditional

Oak cleft gates

These Oak gates were designed and made for a customer using greenwood. The gates were styled to fit in with their surrounding environment. They also needed to be livestock and deer proof.

To make these gates the green Oak round wood was split into quarters using steel wedges. A froe was used to cleave these quarters into the thinner pieces used to make the individual gate components.

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The rough cleft Oak was smoothed and shaped further using a draw-knife. The greenwood was left to partially season for a number of weeks before the final cutting and assembly of the gates took place.

After the Oak had been rested, the next stage was to mark and cut all the tenons and mortices prior to assembly. The rails were carefully chosen in pairs to ensure a degree of continuity between both gates. This design uses five rails and these are fixed using stainless steel nails. Stainless steel nails are used to limit the chemical reaction of the tannic acid naturally present in Oak with the metal, this avoids dark stains appearing on the wood, which you would eventually get with galvanised or other non-stainless steels grades of nails.

Finally, the vertical pales and diagonal braces were cleft, cut, shaped and fitted to the gates.

All our rustic gates are individually designed and handmade for each customer in either Oak or Sweet Chestnut. For further details, please email info@wealdenheartwood.co.uk or phone (01409) 281549 to discuss your requirements.