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My Recent Woodworking Projects
When I was fifteen I completed a Design & Tech GCSE specifically in “Resistant Materials”, a big part of which involved a practical woodworking section. I had decided to (rather ambitiously) build a desk using mortise-and-tenon joints, but I was completely floundering and none of the joints were strong enough. My teacher, rather than spend a little time helping me out, decided it was appropriate to laugh about how terrible my project was with the other teachers, or so a friend who’d been in the woodshop told me afterwards. Mortified, I decided to scrap the project and focus on the exam so that I might scrape a passing grade, which I did.
It hadn’t crossed my mind to attempt any woodworking again until my partner Jenny and I realised we needed a gate to prevent our dog going upstairs when we were downstairs. (Our dog Fern is mischievous.) We have employed traditional baby gates in other parts of the house but our stairs have an awkward vertical space between the trim and the railing.
Searching on YouTube, I found a straightforward tutorial with a simple design. What I loved about the way this video is presented was that it helped me visualise the gate and therefore believe that I could make it; The creator made it seem so easy.
I didn’t have a miter saw but some googling led me to believe I would need some kind of workbench, some handsaws, a square, a drill (which I already owned), screws and some wood glue.
For the workbench, I ended up going with the very highly recommended Black & Decker workmate, which I still use on various projects. It’s a little low for me though. The handsaws, square and the other bits were fairly easy to buy at Screwfix. Jenny and I drove to Sydenhams for the wood, a builder’s merchant. We had to cut down some longer pieces so they’d fit in my Skoda Octavia spaceback.
I didn’t really have any expectations of myself, as I preprared to begin the project. I knew it highly unlikely that I’d end up with nothing; if all went to plan I’d have a working gate.
The gate took me most of a weekend to build. Quickly I learned that, even with accurate measurements and markings, my cuts were just not consistently straight, which you can see at the tops of each vertical a little.
I’m fairly pleased with the gate’s fairly straightforward, functional design. To mount it on the wall I placed a piece of wood on the wall and used my wood drill bit to drill through it and only a little into the wall to mark it. Then, on the masonry setting I drilled much bigger holes for rawlplugs. Initially I only used three screws but some weeks later, after my dog had rested her paws on the gate a number of times and seeing it drop a few millimeters at the bolt end, I added another two.
For the bolt, I imrovised a fixing made of two perpendicular pieces, fixed to the wall with three rawlplugs. This part of the gate was the least secure. There’s about 1mm of clearance from the gate frame but Jenny and I like that we can often rest the gate in the closed position without locking it, so the dog can come downstairs if we want to give her the option.
We chose to paint the gate with white Dulux satinwood paint. I didn’t realise that I probably should have used a primer, but actually the paint took well. I rushed this part because I was so excited to mount and use my gate and perhaps, on reflection, shouldn’t have. This becomes a recurring theme in my other projects; overcome with excitement I often rush the decorating part, compromising the finish.