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        t times bending over a workbench doing detail carving can get tedious. 
      One sometimes longs to get out, grab chisel and mallet and start chopping joints  in a length of timber.
            commission recently became available for a fence and arbor for Christina Wallach at her home in Sebastopol.  As the owner of an art glass company, Amri Studio, she knows what she likes and saw an example of the fence she had in mind.
Not knowing it at the time, she had fallen in love with a fence at the home of and by the reknowned fence and gate builder Charles Prowell. 
     Studies of the fence were made and then variations on the theme were applied to personalize it to her taste.
   o tie the fence/arbor to the existing architecture of the house, a gable roof theme was adopted early on.   This was first expressed in the top rail of the fence panels where 4x4 stock was ripped into  one-piece gable roofed rails.  
     The construction of the fence panel is all of mortise and tenon joinery (82 per panel) and assembled with  marine epoxy to complete the first step in weather resistance.
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          aks and Japanese Maples on the property display one of the primary effects that Christina was looking for in a fence: Transluscence.    The diffusion of  light.    A fence defines a border, but in this case in allowing a  glimpse of what lies beyond, it achieves a luminous delicacy, and becomes a dialogue between the house and the public road which it fronts.   
The placement of the horizontal spacers connecting the pickets together was designed with two considerations in mind:  first to support the long vertical pickets against warping; and secondly to create a symetrical arrangement of openings that was pleasing to the eye.

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        he post caps were designed as pyramidal roofs to protect the top of the post from exposure and rot.    The cap moulding was custom routed to give a profile to the post, not the cap.  To achieve this the moulding was milled to a 1/16"  thickness at its thinnest dimension above the bottom bead to create the illusion that the moulding emerges out from the post.
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        hristina requested that this                side gate share a similar picket pattern to the fence panels and a top and bottom rail of the same 2x stock thickness and of the same redwood material.   Considering its four foot span it would have required thicker rails and stiles to prevent sagging. To compensate and stengthen the mortise and tenon corner joints of the frame, a solution was found in the form of a welded flat steel frame that was screwed and epoxied into a mortise in the rails and stiles and covered with a veneer.   All in all it provides for a fairly light gate with the same delicate features of the fence.
    It swings on three brass hinges that are screwed into epay plugs that have been epoxied into the stile and post.
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     he arbor is designed to match her home's gabled front entry roof which has an arched soffit.    The horizontal plates, supporting the arched principal rafters, and the tie beams pierce the posts through mortises.   The arched principal rafters lock onto the horizontal plates with lap joints as do the perlins into the principal rafters.  And all are held in place without fasterners with the exception of the common rafters on the top which are nailed and the shingle boards that cover the ridge beam at the very top that provide weather protection for the joints  where all the rafters meet the ridge beam.
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    The benches inside the main double gate are cantelevered to simplify and streamline the design.  A tie beam passes through a mortise in each post and is locked into position by the cantilever beams supporting the bench planks.
    Below are a stack of cantilever beams after drilling and fitting for the dowels.
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    ot associated with the above property, is another gate constructed a few years back that leads to a vegetable garden.  It has a similar roof structure of a loosely assembled (no pins or fasteners) system of rafters, beams and perlins but is built to support a concrete tile roof.  The roof gives it a solid feeling that I prefer and has a  poured concrete roof cap that holds the tiles together and provides weather protection for the unfinished redwood construction.  The redwood in this gate will eventually weather into a gray to compliment the roof.
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