Escape Room Gate 1

My daughter and son-in-law that own Open Door Escape Games asked me to help them with another project. What they wanted me to build is a gate that will be made out of some heavy duty material that you see below. The wire mesh has 3 1/2" squares and are 1/4" diameter steel. And next to that is some 1" square tubing that has a 1/8" wall thickness.

This new Escape Room is going to be a scary type game and the players will be in a room with this gate locked keeping them inside while they solve clues.

I plan on doing a lot of cutting and welding to end up with something that resembles a gate when I'm finished. And there will be some hinges attached as well.

Working With Metal

Here I'm cutting some of the square tubing, two at a time to make sure they are the same length. Notice the clamp at the far end (arrow). This is to keep the pieces from moving so they end up the same length.

I'm going to miter cut all the corners so I moved the jaws on my metal cutting saw to 45 degrees.

The size of the gate is 72" X 68", which is larger than my mobile work bench. That meant I had to use the floor to do my welding.

To keep my pieces from moving, I'm using two types of clamps. The arrows are pointing to my 3" Kant-Twist clamps that are clamped to the tubing. And the larger squeeze clamp is clamped across those other clamps keeping my corner nice and tight while I tack weld it together.

Once I had the four corners tack welded, I stood the frame on it's side to do the final welding. Note the wood blocks on the floor. I stood on those (along with my foot pedal) so I could see the top of the frame.

I used my angle grinder with a cut-off wheel to cut the wire mesh to length.

Here I'm welding the wire mesh at each end with the aid of my work bench and saw horses. I'll do the center piece once everything else is welded.

Here you can see that I'm welding at each node of the mesh.

I made sure the center piece was in the correct position with the help of a few clamps.

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