Head gate move

I completed moving my head gate gate back eight feet.  It was now or never as once I rebuilt the east side of the loading corral that would lock in the location of the head gate from now on.

I wanted to move the head gate back a little bit after observing over the years several of the cattle haulers with goose-neck and/or 30 ft stock trailers having limited room in which to maneuver in the overall corral when backing up to the loading ramp.  I think the extra 8 ft will make it easier for them.

When two of my uncles were visiting me in early June I planned on using their help in moving the head gate.  They had helped me install the head gate four years ago when they were last here.

The night before the big move I dug out one of the 10 ft railroad ties located where I wanted to move the head gate.  The 10 ft ties were too tall to operate the head gate as the control lever is on top of the gate and goes forward and backward depending on how you want the gate's doors to open.  My uncle Curt looked at me funny when I said I was going to dig the ties out and remove them.  His idea was to cut the tops of the ties off to the height I needed.   I didn't want to do that for two reasons:

1. 10 ft ties are not all that common and I had other places where I could put these two ties.
2. I wanted to move the head gate's new location not only 8 ft back, bit also a little to one side.  This would give a slight bend to the end of the loading ramp, positioning it closer in direction to the corral's main gate.  This also would help in backing a stock trailer up the loading ramp.

So, even though these 10 ft ties are so heavy I can't lift them, I dug a large hole around them and leaned and drug them out of their holes.  No easy task.

Wednesday morning, June 8,  my uncles and I would get an early start.  I would dig out the second railroad tie and Curt would get the new bolts needed.  I woke up Wednesday morning to this:

"Hey!  Wait!  Where are you going?!"

Yup.  My uncles bailed on me.  

To be fair, the weather forecast when we woke up Wednesday morning was 100% chance of rain all day, and it was raining already and muddy in the corral.  No work was possible on Wednesday and my uncles and aunts had to leave Thursday at the latest.  They had only initially delayed their departure to Thursday so they could help me move the head gate.

So I was on my own.  This is where I was at when my uncles left.  And, yes, it rained all day on Wednesday.

After working on a a few other projects these past few weeks I turned my attention to the head gate early last week.  Instead of getting the gate moved in one day as planned with my uncles, it took me a number of days to complete.

First I had to dig out the second 10 ft railroad tie.  Then I found two solid 8.5 ft ties and placed them in the ground.  The head gate was attached to an old post and old railroad tie.  Neither of which I reused for the head gate.  One, because it was a post and not a railroad tie.  Second, the tie currently used was "disfigured".  "Disfigured" in that the tie's width varied.  The ends of the tie were not the full 5 to 7 inches width of a normal tie.

Placing the new ties in the ground was harder than it sounds.  As I mentioned earlier I planned to "bend" the last section of fence leading up the head gate.  The decision was: how much to bend the fence?

Then I had to calculate how far apart to put the two ties.  I had a limited amount of distance to work with as I had to balance the minimum distance together (the head gate opening) with the maximum distance apart (I needed to bolt the head gate to the ties).

I also had to factor in the height of the ties above the ground.  The maximum height (where the tie interfered with the lever).  The minimum height (where the gate bolted to the ties).

Complicating the height calculations was that I wanted the gate to be higher than the general ground level. The goal was to have the bottom of the gate close to the level of the stock trailer so the cattle would have little to no step up into the trailer.  Since the cattle are often reluctant to get into a trailer, the easier it is for them to do so, the easier it is to load them.  Once the gate is installed I place dirt around the head gate and give the last 8 ft of the loading ramp a slope up to the head gate.  This dirt ramp wasn't there when I placed the ties in the ground so I had to estimate how high to place the gates.

I measured once, twice, thrice.  Over and over.  At least I could kind of lift and move these 8.5 ties.  That ability came in handy as I found after I had placed the first tie in the ground that I forgot one calculation.

Any idea what that could be?

Remember the bend for the last fence section?  What happens when you move two straight lines to one side, yet want the end points to be parallel the the starting points?  The answer is that one line (fence) is longer than the other line (fence).  My problem was that both fences were the same length.  Even when placing the one tie as far to the end of the fence as I could (the ties were 7 inches thick so I did have some room to play with), my "short" fence was still several inches too short as seen in the following photo.  The head gate needed to sit flat against both ties.

I needed the two ties to be parallel in order to bolt the head gate to them.  So... I had to dig out the tie on the left and move it back those few inches so the ties were parallel.  Then I had to cut a few inches off the left ("long") fence so that the fence would not stick out past the tie.

Because the fence sections were straight and could not really bend, I had to trim their ends so they lay flat against the ties at the other end. Laying flat against the ties made for a more secure surface when nailing the fences to the ties.

With the new ties finally in place I removed the head gate from the old location.  For the 4 inch by 4 inch board at the bottom of the head gate, three of the four lags screws snapped in half when I tried to screw them out.  I had the strength to turn the screws (irresistible force) but they were screwed into an old railroad tie (immoveable object).

The rest of the bolts came out fairly easily.

Because it seemed as if the ties moved each day, I bolted the bottom 4" by 4" board onto the ties. Then I nailed a board across the top of the ties to hold them in place until I installed the head gate.  That fixed the width between the ties at 28.5 inches apart.  I swear that the previous day after I placed the ties in the ground they were 29 inches apart.

Because I was using new, full width, ties I needed new bolts.  Due to the design of the head gate (see photo below)  I only had two inches (beyond the width of the tie) to work with.  I needed to buy 8 inch bolts but could go as long as 9 inches.  No shorter than 8 inches.  Unlike the last time Curt and I shopped for bolts to initially install the head gate, this time I easily found 8 inch bolts at Home Depot.

Drilling through the railroad ties was a problem.  While the ties are dense, that was not the problem.  The problem was my drill bits were not long enough.  I do have a 1" long wood drill bit.  But as the bolts were 1/2", the 1" bit was too big.  When an animal is in the head gate there would be a lot of pressure on the gate and bolts and I wanted the bolt hole to be snug.

I drilled one side, then measured and drilled the other side.  The holes did not meet.  What?!  Hmmm... what did Curt and I do last time?  I remembered and found the nail/spike we used last time and pounded that through the tie hole I had drilled.  I found that my second hole was an inch off.    After I drilled through to match the hole I mixed up some cement and filled the bad hole.  The tie is dense and solid but I wasn't taking a chance that my bad hole would weaken the good hole.

My ties and bolts ready for the head gate.

When marking the location where to drill, I used putty.  Even so, when it came time to install the gate one bolt was a quarter inch off.  Also because I used (from my "treasure pile") a slightly larger bolt on one side, its washer would not fit in the head gate space.  I had to file one side of the washer flat.

I got my exercise.  The head gate is very heavy and it took my full attention to lift it and move it in place.  The gate would not stand in place so I had to put it back on the ground between tasks.

Measure.  Head gate: Up down.
Need a better way to mark where to drill.  Up down.
Drill.  Up down.
Washer doesn't fit.  Up down.
Washer still doesn't fit.  Up down.
Bolt doesn't fit into hole.  Up down.  Up down.
Try this.  Try that.  Up down.
Remove the board nailed to the top.  Up down.
Move the one tie slightly so the bolt will fit.  Up down.
Need a wrench.  Up down.
Nut will not thread onto bolt.  Strange.  It screwed on the bolt fine before I lifted the head gate up.  Up down.
The large bolt needed a bit more room.  I need to trim the tie around the bolt.  Up down.
Need more trimming.  Up down.
On and on.

Recessed bolt.

Finally I got part of the head gate bolted so I no longer had to lift the gate up and down.  *whew*


Here is the gate installed at the new location.   The railroad tie in front of the gate shows the old location of the head gate.

This shows how much of a bend I made in the head gate location as the post shows the right side of the former location.

Here are a couple of views of the loading ramp that shows the bend I put at the end with the head gate.

A side view.  Notice I already started to pile up dirt around the head gate for the dirt ramp.

When I removed the railroad tie the head gate used to be bolted to, I found this post buried next to it.  From the length of the post it appears a previous person pounded the post into the ground rather than removing it when no longer needed.

So what would have taken my uncles and I a day to complete, took me three or more days to complete.  But it is done.  Hooray!