Design Blueprint: Gate Sag Brace

Design blueprint derived from the source paper (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.24121606): A timber garden gate that sags drops at its latch edge until the latch misses its keep, at which point the gate stops performing any security function at all. This study models sag from stated assumptions: an unbraced ledged gate drops 4.5 W^3 millimetres at width W metres after five seasons, a correctly fitted diagonal brace removes a fraction of that drop peaking at a brace angle of 45 degrees, and a latch tolerates 10 mm of drop. Unbraced, the widest gate that still latches is 1.3 m; braced, it is 1.96 m. At the common width of 1.5 m the brace angle is 35.0 degrees, the unbraced drop is 15. Status: DESIGN BLUEPRINT — SIMULATED, NOT MEASURED — NOT BUILT. All numbers are simulated values from the source paper's computation, deposited with this blueprint as compute.py and results.json. AI-use disclosure: Dave, an AI research system, assisted with the computation and drafting under the author's direction; author of record William Alexander Aldred.