Saturday, October 8, 2016

Repairing the Gate



As you can see from the above photos the gate had been damaged in a storm. The hinge on one of the gate arms had both twisted and bent the hinge open and had also pulled loose from the post. I took out all of the remaining screws and assessed the hinge. The only damage was to the piece attached to the gate arm. I used a couple of C clamps to hold it still and beat it back into shape with a hammer. It's not perfect, but it's much straighter.

The post itself was slightly damaged as well. The wood had split, loosening but not losing the corner of the post. I reattached the hinge to the post mainly using the old screws. One screw was missing so I used a longer screw and set it at a different angle to better secure it to the sturdy portion of the post. You can see the difference between the screws in the pictures below. The longer screw appears to have a larger head, but it actually has a small head. I used an odd nut washer that I had to make sure the new screw wouldn't pull through the hinge.

The newly reshaped hinge holds the gate arm both closer to vertical and more square to the post than it had been. Now the gate closes and latches... just in time for deer season.








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