Bamboo Gate

From Madwiki

This summer I was fortunate enough to volunteer at Kokua Kalihi Valley Community Gardens in Honolulu, where I was asked to work on a few bamboo projects. This gate I designed and built with some help from other volunteers in about 5 days. First, we harvested bamboo in 1", 3", and 4" diameters, and cleaned and oiled them. We also burnished them over a fire pit but I'm not so sure that did anything, though it is thought to harden and cure the poles. I gave all poles a double coat of varnish.

The gate used no screws or metal fasteners. Instead, I used a hole saw to make 3" diameter holes in the 4" diameter vertical poles and then created a rectangle out of these larger bamboo poles. The corners were fixed to one another by drilling through both poles and inserting a chopstick with a rubber mallet, then clipping the overhang. (you can see a very small hole at the corner joint in the close up picture).

Then I used the hole saw again to make 1" directional holes in the larger poles and wedged the 1" bamboo into the square frame in a diamond pattern. All the poles slanted to the right are in one plane, the poles slanted to the left are on another plane. Fitting them together was tricky and took some help at first. Also, I adjusted the fit of the holes using a dremel.

One of the diagonal poles has a wire running through it which wraps around the outside of either side of the square frame and has a tightener which I used to support the gate and keep it from sagging. The wire runs from top of the side of the gate that will be bolted to a wall down and across to the bottom of the side of the gate that swings.

In the close-up picture, you can see the holes and the poles are not a great fit. So I sealed the holes with clear silicon to try to keep the substantial Hawai'ian humidity out of the inside of the poles. By the way, for the same reason of keeping excess moisture out, the tops of the poles that made up the square frames were carefully cut near a node.

I made a panel for the gate to fit next to in the same way. The panel and gate were finished with split bamboo tied along the edges of the frame, which also hid the messy silicon. I also died a spool of jute black to make decorative ties at the pole crosses and to tighten up the two "planes" of diagonals. The result was quite sturdy and will hopefully last a few years before succumbing to the elements. Here I am, happy with my work, though I won't see it fixed in place for quite a while...

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