I started working on the second small gate and used my story stick to transfer the dimensions to the wood. It worked really nicely also for laying out the picket spacing on the jig. Just line up the center mark and wa la .. your pickets are centered on the gate. I used the same method on the first gate.
Here’s the first one. I have another small one to build and a large one across the driveway.
I realized that I hadn’t yet put the end pickets on to match the adjacent panels when I took the picture.
Here’s a few shots of how the fence work is progressing. The fence needs a coat of primer and a top coat so it’ll be awhile before we actually get the fence up. In the meantime, here a bit on how I’m putting things together.
I used a giant jig to lay out the panels and screwed the rails and post together. Then used my track saw to make short work of trimming the fence to size.
I also got lots of sawing practice timing the rails and used my block plane, of course, to trim the rails to fit the mortises.
I had the contractor install the fence posts so that my arms wouldn’t fall off installing the 16 posts needed to construct the fence. Then, I used my power router to make mortises/dados for the rails.
Gratuitous flower shot with fence pole mortise in the back ground.
.. the shop ..
.. the yard.
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Bye the way, know what you do with fence cut offs?
Make a cat tower .. of couse!
So the contractor finished their part of the fence and it turned out pretty nicely. This is actually the final project associated with our 2009 remodel since the old garage was actually our fence.
While they were working on that, I was making one giant jig so that I could pre-build the fence panels for the front section of the fence that we will build. Its not finished here, but it shows how I use a story stick. I’ve used story sticks for a lot my house projects with good results especially on the siding for the house.
sheworkswood.com 