I built this gate and fence from redwood I found on the property. When one of the previous owners wanted to build a cottage, he had to cut down some of the redwoods to make room for the new dwelling. He left the logs in a pile that spent the next 30 years out in the open. By the time I got to them, the sapwood had completely rotted, but most of the heartwood was still in good shape.

I milled the logs into dimensional lumber and got some nice 6×6 beams, each 16 feet long, which I used for another project I was working on at the time. I milled two 8x6x12 posts for the gates, along with 2x6s and 4x4s for the structure and half-inch boards of variable width for the pickets. Most were wide enough to cut in half lengthwise—along a fiber line, following a wavy path. The idea to use a jigsaw for this came to me just as I was about to cut the first board; I’d planned to cut them in straight lines with a circular saw. Those wavy lines give them a nicer, more natural touch, I think. Nature doesn’t work in straight lines, after all.

Then disaster struck. I had the motors set to auto-close. The propane truck came in slower than usual, and the driver—not noticing the gates closing—kept driving and broke one of them.

I was upset at the time, but I took the following Saturday to rebuild it and disabled the gate’s auto-close function. One idea I’ve been mulling over is adding laser sensors to stop the gates from closing when an obstacle is present. I may do that down the line, but for now, I’m good.