SLIDING WOOD DRIVEWAY GATES #4

Wood Driveway Gates #4 is Base Price + 12% to 20% (W/Pattern Blocks)
Base Price +9% (W/O Pattern Blocks)
> Go to Base Price Table

Featuring Vertical Pickets with Pattern Blocks
(W/O Patttern Blocks, the height is limited to 60″)

Half of a typical Wood Auto Gate style #4. To stabilize the vertical pickets, Pattern Blocks were introduced in the mid ’90s . . . joined to the pickets with small sturdy tenons. Without the Pattern Blocks and the overall height is limited to only 60″. Beyond that and the pickets are vulnerable to bowing and cupping just enough to throw off the visual eye of the uniform spacing.

The actual pattern itself runs the gamut, restricted only by the dictum that every picket must be connected to a Pattern Block on at least one edge.

Mill Valley, CA (Marin County)

As a single-span sliding wood driveway gate, flanked by two lighted columns.

Mill Valley, CA (Marin County)

A series of Fence Panels style #16 terracing off to the left, and the Garden Gate style #32 on the right of the Sliding Driveway Gates #4.

Mill Valley, CA (Marin County)

Now and again it helps to see a site before the transition. Situated only a few feet from the street, an open exposure providing little privacy from the passing eccentrics . . . such as Charles’ illegitimate bastard identical twin, Chuck, who has no credible reason to be in this neighborhood, nor this county, nor the entire state for that matter. Someone should notify someone. This is trouble!

Mill Valley, CA (Marin County)

The Automated Vehicle Gates open by sliding through the lighted column as a single-span gate.

Mill Valley, CA (Marin County)

A view from within the property. The automated vehicle drive gate and to the right, a series of terraced Fence Panels style #16 .

Mill Valley, CA (Marin County)

The single-span steel frame, to which the sliding wood gate is mounted. 2″ x 2″ hollow tube steel.

Mill Valley, CA (Marin County)

Not the best exposure, showing the lighted columns in total darkness.

Double Wooden Driveway Gates #4-2 showing the revised layout of the Pattern Blocks. This is our preferred layout for the Pattern Blocks.

Mill Valley, CA

Automated Wooden Driveway Gates #4-2 on a sloping grade, accompanied by 13 terraced fence panels style #16. If the gates appear slightly cattywhompas, it’s because they are partially open, compounded visually by the sloping grade.

* Twenty years on the lam and Jocko relaxes. Twenty years since his first appearance on Garden Gate #40-1 on the heels of front page headlines depicting that rowboat rendezvous under a gibbons moon on San Francisco Bay. With each stroke of the oars, San Quentin faded and faded and twenty years later he’s beat the system. The fog horns, the searchlights, the helicopters, given way to the Great Escape. Settling down with his devoted Lolita, bankrolled by the riches of his bank-robber’s cache into the comfortable neighborhood of a radical hamlet just a stone’s throw from the Big House, the Big Q,
But what’s this? It must be a joke. A mirage. Is this a joke? Drats!
On Gate #40
On Fence #21
On Drive Gate #4
On Gate #23
On Gate #75

Alameda, CA
(Complex Pattern Block pattern)

Automated Wooden Driveway Gates #4-1 feature a Pattern Block layout slightly more complex.

Alameda, CA

A temporary photo of the installation.

PROGRESS

Each leading edge is trued on the joiner before the pickets themselves are ripped initially on the bandsaw to prevent bowing. From the bandsaw, they go through the thickness planer to create the final net width, and from the planer to the drum sander for the finished edge sanding. Although this process weeds out 90% of the potentially bowed pickets, the insistence for true and straight pickets is furthered by the use of the Pattern Blocks joined to each picket such that no single picket is left alone and vulnerable to the ravages of solitude.

Speaking of solitude: your driveway gate is on the front lines, distanced from the warmth and comfort of your hearth while braving the brunt of snow storms, ice storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, and the sun-bleached humidity of August. All alone, year after year. Decade after decade, requiring only your occasional smile of gratitude as you pass through.

The Pattern Blocks are mortised and joined individually to their corresponding pickets. Shown below, the importance of a square layout when clamping to insure the ends of the pickets are even.