Vertical Bar Entrance Gate with Timber Slat Panel

Project Overview

A tall steel entrance gate built around closely spaced vertical bars, with a horizontal timber slat band set into the lower section. The bar spacing is tight enough to read as a screen rather than a picket fence, so the gate gives privacy at eye level while still letting light and air through.

The timber band breaks up what would otherwise be a single flat plane of steel, and gives the gate a warmer line at the height people actually stand next to it.

What We Built

• A welded steel perimeter frame with closely spaced vertical bar infill
• A horizontal timber slat panel set into the lower portion of the gate
• Matching fixed panels continuing the same bar spacing beside the opening
• Full shop fabrication, then transport and installation into a masonry opening

Fabrication

The frame was laid out flat on the shop floor and the bars set out across it before anything was welded solid. With infill this tight, spacing errors accumulate fast — a fraction of a millimetre per bar becomes a visibly wider gap by the far end of the panel, so the run is set out from both ends and met in the middle rather than marched across from one side.

The panels were then stood up and checked as assemblies, welded out, and the timber section fitted last so the steelwork could be finished without working around the wood.

Installation

The completed frame was lifted and set into a masonry opening on site. A gate this size is heavy and unforgiving on alignment: it has to be plumb in two directions and square to the opening before anything is fixed, because a gate that is slightly out will either bind or drift open on its own once it is hung.

Project Gallery

For the range of driveway and pedestrian gates we build, see custom metal gates.