Project number 2 , Worntorn, Driveway gates, stone posts and planters.

Attachment 2340This was a home mega project I did some years ago. It started when my dog got out on the road and was hit by a car. I thought, "how difficult could it be to whip up some automatic driveway gates?"

Very difficult is the answer. I got a bit carried away with the design and added granite posts, curved caps (made a special mould and hand poured 1 cap per day), flower planters and a built in irrigation system.
I built the gate operators as well, that was a project in itself. I did get several good jobs from the gate project and the gates have worked well to keep all dogs off the road.

All of the stone is 4" thick Granite and is backed by reinforced concrete. The total concrete pour was 27 cubic metres. When I started in housing in the 70s we were pouring most complete house foundations with less than 10 metres!
So I spent a long time forming it all, especially with the curves involved . A Buddy did the stone work in exchange for some furniture building.

The picture shows the Norton in one driveway. There is a matching setup on the next driveway which goes to the shop. I think I worked fulltime on this project for about two months, long hours too as I recall. I was so long on this that funds were running low by the end of it due to all of the paying jobs that had been deferred or passed up while I toiled on the gates. The actual fabbing of the gates was a relatively small part of the overall job.

Glen

Here are some current pictures that show both sets. Looks like I need to do a bit of a demoss and maybe get the paint brush going again!

The caps that look a bit like Sherlock Holmes' hat were poured into a knock down mould I made. The mould was painted with concrete retardant before each pour. The caps were poured in upside down. A 30x 30 by 2" deep recess was formed into the bottom of each cap so that the caps would drop down over nicely over the uneven top of the stonework. One day after pouring, the form was dissasembled, the 600 lb cap lifted out and flipped then washed with a pressurewasher to create the exposed agg finish. I destroyed 2 caps doing the removal of the day old caps, so I had to make 8 in total.

The other capping was all formed and poured in place, same retardant then day later strip forms and p wash routine, only no second chance on the poured in place capping.
The little curve section that runs up from planter back height to the post cap height was the most challenging part to form.

The gates were built in my shop. I tried to shape the scroll to look like a treble clef on it's side. The scroll is there partly for decoration and partly to provide an angle brace to the gate. The gates are quite large and heavy, 18' in a single leaf.
The top beam of the gate is made from a 20' piece of square tube that I sent out for rolling into a 9' circle. I cut the rolled tube up and reversed the pieces in order to get the reversing curve of the top beam, then welded the curved centre part to straight legs at the ends (the level part of the top beam)

Glen