Wooden Gate Latch

When you think about it, the way we go about doing things now is completely alien to most of our history. We used to make everything ourselves and fix them, somehow now we think the first thing should be to buy the fix. 

And in the past most stuff was made out of wood, stone and little bits of metal. I know we used other materials, but there were so many jobs working wood in different ways it's unreal. 

Which brings me on to my latest temporary fix, the latch on the gate post to the apiary.  

Making a Gate From A Yew Log - Green Woodworking - Part 2

 So with some chunks of yew at my house it was time to break them down a bit smaller. When I've worked with sweet chestnut a froe is a handy tools for this.

The knotty yew wouldn't entertain this idea though. So it was axe and wedges for every piece. Intruth I could have donw with soem bigger bits, as it was I ended up using quarters for the styles of the gate when really it would be better to hew something square from something bigger.