GATES TERMS

In Aphabetical Order | About Doors and Gates |
Ba | Br | Fr | He | Jo | Pi | Ra | St

Picket
A slender vertical member used in the construction of some wrought iron gates. Pickets tend to be 3 to 4 inches wide and between 1/2and 1/4 inch thick. The term comes from the 01d French piquer, meaning to prick. Although the term has now come to mean a pointed stick or slat, it once meant the pointed ' part of a palisade or fence. To post a picket meant to put a guard at the gate. In England, the words picket and wicket are more or less interchangeable.

Post caps
Decorative caps used to top gateposts. They might be flat or shaped like balls, pineapples or acorns.

Pediment
A roof like detail used to decorate the top rail of some gates.

Pyramidal top
A gatepost design consisting of a square section post with the top chamfered back so that the top of the post looks like a pyramid.

Pegged blind mortise
A mortise that stops short of the back end of the stile, with the whole joint fixed with a square section peg. Traditionally, with five-bar field gates, the three middle rails on the hinge side are blind-mortised into the harr post.