My Front Gate Project

   / My Front Gate Project #92  
My mighty mule looks like a hydraulic cylinder on the outside, but it's just a tube over the screw. Ice had mine - definitely slow - for about 8 years; I replaced the motor with something off of eBay for about $50 last year.

I'm interested in this thread because I'm replacing my outer fence, going from 5' to about 7' and will be redoing our gate as well - moving it and going from a single ?10' to something like two 7' gates, custom design (... I need to find a crafter, my welding skills are not for public view!). Obviously I'll be replacing the opener as well.
Thanks for the link. For me, I decided that I did not want a hydraulic cylinder type of opener. Once I learned about the screw type openers, I felt that was a much better design for the long term. Only time will tell if I made the right choice.
 
   / My Front Gate Project
  • Thread Starter
#93  
Interesting that you used black ink outside. I'm not sure it will hold up. Sun exposure tends to bleach color out of dyes, so it will depend on what it is made of. If it is full carbon black, then it should hold up fine, but if it is made from ink dyes then it will probably bleach out. It takes inorganic pigments to hold up outdoors (which carbon black would be). That is why you use paint pens for making outdoor signs and not sharpies as the sharpies fade in the sun very fast. Titanium dioxide is the most common inorganic pigment (TiO2) as it is white, so gets blended with a lot of things, especially in paints. A lot of metal oxides are used for these - Cobalt, Nickel, Iron, etc and the heavy metals in the old days Lead (thus the name "lead paint") and mercury, etc. but those are pretty well banned due to toxicity. The heavy metal pigments were super stable which is why they were used for so long, but as people became more aware of the toxicity concerns, that changed.

I wasn't aware of all that. I was very pleased with how the black ink worked on my cement kitchen counter tops, so that's all I was hoping for. Hopefully I got lucky and bought something that will last. If not, I'll just do it again with something better. So far, it still looks fantastic without any sign of fading, but I'm sure that Summer will be the big test on fading.

Today is day ten of having Covid and the first day that I'm really starting to feel that it's coming to an end. It's never gotten really bad, just a lot of fatigue and random symptoms that come and go. sometimes they last all day, other days it's on and off again a during the day.
 
   / My Front Gate Project #94  
We will keep you and and your wife in our prayers for a speedy recovery Eddie.
 
   / My Front Gate Project #95  
I wasn't aware of all that. I was very pleased with how the black ink worked on my cement kitchen counter tops, so that's all I was hoping for. Hopefully I got lucky and bought something that will last. If not, I'll just do it again with something better. So far, it still looks fantastic without any sign of fading, but I'm sure that Summer will be the big test on fading.

Today is day ten of having Covid and the first day that I'm really starting to feel that it's coming to an end. It's never gotten really bad, just a lot of fatigue and random symptoms that come and go. sometimes they last all day, other days it's on and off again a during the day.

Ford850 looked up your ink a few posts back and says it is non-fade carbon black, so you should be good to go. But something to make sure of in the future for any similar tasks.:thumbsup:
 
 
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