T&G Gate in to Tapered Opening?

[OPJ]

Hi all,

I'm planning to make a tongue and groove gate fairly soon. I've got all the wood and the PTGV boards. It'll be a fairly traditional ledge and brace design (no stiles) and either side I'll have two wall plates (94x44mm) with stops to be planted on later.

Something like this:

I actually bought most of the wood for this project almost a year ago! Having measured the opening again last night, I'm reminded that neither wall is perfectly plumb, meaning that this opening tapers inwards by about 20mm from bottom to the top. So, where the bottom measures 1140mm wide, the top only leaves me with 1120mm.

You may not be able to see it in this photo but, anyway:

That's not all... The brick wall on the house-side (on which I intend to hang the gate) is straight and sound. It's the garage wall, with that horrible pebble-dashed (I think?) finish, which actually bows out near the middle, meaning my wall plate would not sit flat against it.

So, I have a bit of an obstacle to overcome and I'm not quite sure of how to do it. Even if the garage wall was flat, I'd still have to deal with 'the taper'.

I don't fancy making a tapered gate as it might look odd, with all the vertical boards. Tapering a 94mm width of timber, 2.1m long, doesn't seem like an easy task either. I'm also concerned that packing out the wall plates would leave gaps behind where would could become trapped (and, of course, it might not look pleasing to the eye).

What do people think I should do to overcome this? Any thoughts would be appreciated. If it matters, this gate must open outwards (towards the horrible, dark green fence) and on to the driveway.

Thanks for your time.

 

[Tom K]

Well I'd start by using a slightly thicker wall plate on the garage side and scribe it in so you dont end with a piece of kindling at the bottom. Once the worst side is plumb the rest will
follow easily.

 

[jasonB]

Scribe the wall plates, that way your hinge pivots will be vertically above each other, if they are not the gate will want to swing open or closed.

To make life easy cut 75mm groove into the back of teh post, that way you only need to scribe two 10mm wide edges - easy with a plane and no one will notice the back is hollow

 

[mailee]

I agree with the posts above. definitley scribe the post. I do like that idea of hollowing out the back Jason, I never would have thought of that. Hmmm.

 

[OPJ]

Thanks for the advice and, in particular, to Jason - what a great idea to hollow out the backs! That's what I'll try and do once I've got the first coat of paint on (Sadolin Woodshield/Superdec).

I'll try to do a WIP in the appropriate forum as well. ;-)

 

[jasonB]

Ideally stop teh hollow just short of teh top of teh post but as its just a gate its nor really an issue.

I do this on all the things I'm likely to have to scribe such as faceframes - just cut a rebate so there is 5-6mm left at the front which can easily be trimmed with a cordless circ saw and fine tuned with a blockplane, far easier than trying to plane say 22mm MDF or hardwood on site.

J