Copper Rivets on Chestnut

There's a reason we don't put steel fixings through a chestnut gate. Sweet chestnut is high in tannin — it's part of what makes it last so well outside — but tannin and steel don't get on. Put an ordinary steel bolt or nail through it, leave it out in the weather, and before long you'll see a black streak bleeding down the timber from every fixing. It's a small thing, but it's the sort of small thing that tells you who made the gate and whether they were paying attention.

So we copper-rivet instead. Copper doesn't react with the tannin, and where a steel head would rust and stain, a copper one just weathers to a soft brown that sits happily against the wood. We set the rivets through the braces, then peen the ends over by hand — working the copper down with a hammer until the head spreads and pulls tight, sitting flush to the frame rather than proud. It's slower than reaching for the drill and a bag of bolts, but it's the right way, and it lasts.

Anyone can bolt a brace on. Peening a copper rivet flush is a different afternoon.

The braces themselves are the other thing we take trouble over. We joint curved braces straight into the frame — properly let in and seated, not just skinned across the face — which is something almost nobody else round here still bothers with. A curved brace jointed in like that carries the load through the timber the way it's meant to, and the copper rivets hold it there for the long haul. Cleft chestnut, jointed braces, copper peened flush: that's a gate built to be handed on.

If you'd like a chestnut gate made the way they used to be made, that's the sort of detail we live for.