So I made a thing. Well, strictly speaking I designed a thing that then got made by someone else.
We’d been looking for a new gate for some time, but never really found something we liked. I ended up drawing something in AutoCAD (of course) – taking inspiration from a number of images I found on the web – and we took it to Leutwiler SA, a local company who makes custom gates and fences.
The design I made – which was in any case for just the cosmetic stuff, nothing structural – needed some tweaks: once the 3mm steel was lasercut (although frankly it might have been cut with a water jet – I should really have asked what technique they used), we realised that the trunk and branches of the tree on the left panel reduced its rigidity significantly (we knew this would happen from the beginning but somehow hoped it would be OK with thick enough material: it turns out this wasn’t the case). Luckily the fabricator was able to go in and add some strategic welds for rigidity…