Small Backyard Gate Repairs in Older Austin Neighborhoods

Thirty-six inches is a common width for a garden gate in an older Austin yard, and at that width a single bent picket changes how the whole leaf hangs. The figures kept at austin wrought iron gates backyard beans and grains for small entries show that most repairs are modest ones, a weld here and a straightened bar there, on an iron gate in Austin, TX that has simply gone unmaintained for years.

Broken and bent pickets

A picket bent by a bicycle handlebar or a fallen limb can often be straightened cold with a bar and a vise, as long as the metal has not cracked at the bend. A snapped picket is cut out and replaced with the same section of steel, welded top and bottom. Picket spacing has to stay even, since one gap wider than its neighbors stands out as soon as the paint goes on.

Loose collars and cracked welds

A collar that rattles has lost its grip. It can be tightened, tack welded or replaced with a new band heated and shrunk into place. Cracked welds in a frame corner usually show as a rust-colored line. Grind the crack out to clean metal before welding it back, or the crack returns.

Bent frames and racked leaves

A gate that has been kicked or driven into leans into a parallelogram. Square it on a flat surface with clamps, check the diagonals with a tape, and tack the corners before the final welds. Small gates in Clarksville, where the lots are narrow and the sidewalks close, take this kind of knock more than any other.

Old iron in Hyde Park and Clarksville

Many of the side gates in these neighborhoods were made from mild steel bar stock by local shops in the middle of the last century, and the joints were riveted or collared rather than welded. That construction can be repaired, but it should be kept as it is. Replacing a riveted joint with a modern weld changes the look of the whole gate and often weakens the neighboring bars.

When a small gate is worth keeping

A small gate with straight bars, sound joints and no deep pitting is worth the work, since a new one of the same pattern means rebuilding it from scratch. A gate that has lost a quarter of its metal thickness at the bottom rail is a candidate for replacement, or at least a new rail spliced in.