View from the North 40: I'm hung up on swinging gates

The principles behind installing gates are so simple even I can mess them up.

Gates are essential when you have livestock, pets, small children and other animals that you need to keep confined in or out of a fenced area.

I have a few miles of fence plus several pens and corrals, which are equipped with different types and sizes of gates — wire gates, wooden swinging gates, wooden sliding gates and metal swinging gates of all sizes and weights. Some of them I built and most of them I put in place myself.

I wouldn’t call myself a professional gate hanger-upper — because no one has actually paid me to do it — but I have quite a bit of experience hanging gates. And let me tell you what, that experience doesn’t amount to much when it comes to swinging gates. They are my nemesis.

It’s ridiculously simple to hang a livestock gate. You 1) measure how far apart the hinges are, 2) drill a couple holes in a post that far apart, and perpendicular to each other, and then 3) hang the gate.

It doesn’t even involve math — another nemesis.

The hinges on livestock gates come in two styles.

Some have bolt hinges that are permanently attached to the gate and are secured to the post with nuts. The others have bolts separate from the gate. The bolts have a pin on one end, and the gate has some kind of eye-hinge that slips over the pin. Often, this bolt is actually a large, half-inch to three-quarter-inch thick screw.

Also, all the gates have one fixed hinge and the other can slide up and down to adjust to where the second hole is drilled, so you don’t have to measure exactly exact.

If it’s so simple, you might be saying, and the system has built-in adjusters, what’s my problem?

First of all, the holes. You have to drill them level or they can cause your hinges to bind. And your holes have to be drilled through the post at the same angle because the hinges are offset from the post. Let’s illustrate the problem:

Make two light fists, then extend a pointer finger from each hand. Place the two finger tips on a flat surface, one above the other. Your fingertips represent the hole openings in the post. Your fingers are the bolts. The length of your fingers represents the distance the gate is offset away from the post to give it freedom of movement and your big knuckles are basically where the hinges are attached to the gate.

Keep your perfectly perpendicular fingertips on the solid surface but move your hands around, changing the angle of your fingers/bolts, and notice how your knuckles — the hinges — are no longer perpendicular. This means, if your holes weren’t drilled pointing the same direction, your bolts are cattywampus, your hinges are cockeyed and your gate is an unlevel disaster at best and unable to swing freely or to the full extent at worst.

In other words, you have failed at gate hanging. Welcome to my world.

Sometimes, though, it’s not entirely your fault. I hate to sound like the kind of person who doesn’t take responsibility for her own mistakes, but sometimes it’s the gate’s fault.

Some of the pin-and-eye hinges have a little bit of play in them to make it easier to slip them on and off, but this can spell disaster.

And it means we are going to do some math. Hang on.

Consider one-eighth of an inch. That’s not much in the larger scheme of gates — you aren’t trying to get to the moon with them.

But gravity pulls the opening end of the gate down, so if the pin-and-eye hinges have 1/8-inch of play each, that’s the same as having your holes off of perpendicular by ¼ inch. This isn’t too bad either, but with hinges 3 feet apart that means your gate drops from level by ¼ inch every 3 feet of length.

All of a sudden your 12-foot gate is low on one end by 1 inch.

If your holes are off in the wrong direction by 1/8 inch each, add another inch.

If your skewed hole-angle makes your hinges offset by 1/8 inch each, add another inch.

Now that gate just hangs there, drooping 3 inches too low, like a miserable display of your ineptitude.

I might as well hang a neon sign in the fence opening that says “failure”

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Check in Saturday to see how my latest gate hanging efforts play out at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40.