![]() You can't put it in the space between the horizontal beams, because then you'd have to attach it to something like eyelet screws on the top and bottom of the beams, and the tension in the wire would try to pull those screws out of the wood. This forces you to put the wire outside the plane formed by the gate structure. ![]() If you look closely at the drawing of the gate with the bracing wire in your question, you'll note that the nails or screws used to attach the wire to the gate are orthogonal to the load on them. For such a brace to do anything, it must be placed so that it's held under tension. On the other hand, a wire brace is obviously useless under compression, as the wire will just flex. And why wouldn't you, since it's just as easy to build either way? If you don't want to do either of those, but just want a simple and easy to build gate that looks like the one in the picture, you need to make sure to put the brace in the right way around. requiring you to pull the brace out of the box created by the frame members and nail it to the side of the frame instead). But that would either complicate the construction or change the way the gate looks (e.g. Of course, you could instead choose to use some other type of joint, like a lap joint of some kind, that is stronger under tension. Not because the brace itself couldn't handle a tension load, but because the joints at its ends can't. Thus, out of the two possible brace orientations, you should choose the one that puts the brace under compression. Thus, if you're making a structure like that gate using such joints, you really don't want any of the joints to be primarily under tension. (They also don't handle torque loads too well, which is one reason why you need a diagonal brace in the first place.) They might hold under tension for a while, but tend to gradually come apart as the nails are slowly pulled out of the wood. Such joints are strong under compression (which just pushes the ends of the wooden beams together), and also relatively strong under lateral loads if the nails are applied properly to resist the load, but they handle tension loads quite poorly. The frame and the brace in the first gate shown in your question seem to be joined together with simple butt joints, probably with nails to hold them together. So maybe we should consider complicating things more? It's certainly cheaper and easier to use more complicated joinery/a 99 cent steel bracket and 2x4s than it is to fabricate an all steel gate frame.Īre 2x4s just undersized to support a load like this or is it possible the bracing can make a difference? Wood is certainly a troublesome material but plenty of critical structures have been made from wood with proper engineering and have held up much longer than this. ![]() Wooden gates almost never hold up to time, and we aren't talking decades here.most wooden gates will sag within 1-2 years. I realize that using the 2x4 for tension would require stronger joinery but it's certainly possible to secure it more than well enough to take the load.Īdditionally a common theme here seems to be that the load on the gate is too trivial to really care either way but I strongly disagree with that statement. In this case the wire rope supports the far end under tension, but is there a reason a 2x4 couldn't also be used under tension rather than compression? Is the former design more effective for some reason? I understand this logic and am sure it works but wouldn't it be preferred to use a tension brace rather than a compression brace in this application?įor example virtually every recommendation for a wire rope support shows the opposite: The idea is that the cross brace will distribute load from the top outside corner into the bottom of the hinge bracket. Looking at guides for building wooden frame gates I almost always find the following design recommendation:
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