One of the hardest things for me to make is gates. Buying them costs a fortune for what you get and the store bought ones still need more to make them animal resistant. So do it yourself is the theme for most of the gates we have!
This article is focusing mainly on latches with a bit about posts thrown in. I’ll detail some of the latches on gates around my animal areas and where they came from/ how they were made.
Some of my latches are as simple as a piece of wire with a snap clip on the end. Below I used two pieces of wire, bent the ends and put them through each other to make a latch between the gate and the fence post (which is an old cut down branch.
Detail of the post. The bottom 2 feet is in the ground, and the wire fencing is wrapped around the branch and secured to itself. This piece of fence does not have a lot of tension on it, I would go further in the ground if it did.
This gate is the spring portion of a crib that a neighbor was throwing out. I used the “piece of wire and clips” method for a latch here as well.
And the third “wire and clips” latch is on another gate that leads into a duck area.
For this latch, it’s an actual gate latch. I screwed the part that flips down and holds the arm onto the wood post. I then had the arm welded onto a piece of cattle panel for me, and tada! Gate!
A caveat on this style gate…I don’t recommend leaving the wire ends sticking out like this. I caught myself on them a few times until I got used to it. When you cut the panel, measure and cut so you can end at a flush vertical bar. I was trying to use what I have around. I plan on gluing wood beads to the ends of the bars soon .
