The only time I've given a lock gate a fair clout (happily a top gate) was on a boat where the owner was new to boating, new to diy and possibly new to common sense.
He had, for some reason, "overhauled " his morse control and would I take the boat out to test it and also take him through his first ever lock. Not a problem I thought (lol) so off we went, tried the morse lever several times and all appeared good. Arrived at the lock and set it, motored into the chamber, thankfully slowly as I was explaining what I was doing, went for astern and all that happened was I picked up speed in forward. Now it's one of those slow motion moments, all I could do was put the lever in neutral and brace for impact. Boat was now still in ahead but at least on tick over, smack!!
Stripped the morse control down in the lock chamber, to find he hadn't bent back the legs of the split pins as he didn't want to "waste " them. Managed to find the missing split pin on the deck board and replaced it, properly this time.
Wasn't impressed with his mechanical skills but it could have been worse.