At our trailer we have a lovely large deck with two stairs that are wide open. It wasn’t a problem before we got the puppy, but now we really need a closed in deck to let her run araound

Other trailers around us have gates made of 2x4 treated wood with the same metal rods as the deck. The black rods can be found at Home Hardware so I thought I’d make some copies. Only I was a bit concerned about just making a simple frame so thought I would go fancy and use mitred half lap joints (for the first time).

It’s very difficult to see in these pictures but the front of the joint is cut at a 45 degree angle and the back is cut at 90 degrees.

Since the pieces have different cuts I got a bit more organized than usual and marked each piece after cutting.

The 45 degrees were cut on the miter saw and the back of the cuts were done on the table saw. I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

and there we have it. Power tools used to simplified a tricky manual task.

But power tools don’t automatically mean that everything fits. Here’s a dry fit of the pieces before gluing. Most of the joints were ok, but there was at least a few joints with a 1/4” space.

My favourite part, as it gave me an excuse to buy some lovely 4’ clamps. Now I can clamp it an all 3 directions.

After glueing, each gate got a thorough sanding. Supposedly to take the marks of the wood, but mostly to level the joints.

And that’s it. Oh, part from the $100 of gate hardware, those hinges, cane bolts and locks aren’t that cheap. Overall I’m quite pleased, the joints look good - from a distance, that is!