I'm going to show you how to set out the rails and the plinth for picket fence.
The equipment you're going to need to do that will include a saw, some safety equipment,
some measuring equipment, hammer and chisel, a nail gun, spirit level, sawhorses are also
going to be helpful, and obviously your rails and your plinth boards.
You also need a ladder for getting up to the top rail.
So now that we've let our concrete sit around our post, it's time to remove all the bracing
and start with their setouts.
So now we're ready to set out for the plinth.
The plinth is a bottom board that makes the fence look finished off at ground level and
also support your pickets when you put them in.
Once we've determined where that plinth is going to go, I'm going to mark around the
post and then cut a block in order to fix the plinth too.
The plinth we're using for this job is made out of treated pine and it's treated to prevent
against rot or insects.
So now that I've worked out where the top of my plinth will be, I need to work out where
my fixing block is going to go.
I'm going to measure up the same distance as my rail and that will be where my fixing
block goes.
The next step is to cut a block and fix it in so I have something to attach my plinth
to.
You could use anything as the block but I'm going to use an off cut of the treated pine.
When you're using treated pine, always use a dust mask.
So now we can nail this block in place and start to set out the plinth.
So now that I've got that block in place, I can measure and cut my plinth and then label
it.
So now we can put the plinth in place, fix it one end, and then level off the other end.
I'm just putting one nail in at this stage so that I can level the plinth completely
across and then nail it off.
So now that I've got my plinth leveled, I can mark off on the post and transfer those
marks around where I'm going to put my fixing block.
I now need to cut another block to fix under the post that I can fix my plinth to.
But I'm actually going to cut a few because I'll need them for each post.
So now I'm going to fix this block in place, then fix my plinth back to the blocks and
then continue along between all the post all the way along the fence line.
So now that we've got our plinth line all the way through this fence, we're now going
to start setting out for the rails.
This post here is part of the existing fence line for the rest of the property, so I'm
going to use all my measurements from this post.
You can see that it's already been checked out in a couple of spots.
So these will be our reference lines.
Now just a little way to make it easy for you is I use one of the pickets that you'd
be using for the fence.
Just put it up on top of the plinth and make all these marks that correspond with the rail
cutouts.
If you are starting from scratch to try and work out where to put your rails, ideally
you put one through around about the center of the picket and then come up a little bit
from the bottom, down a bit from a top just enough to keep the picket nice and straight.
So now that I've transferred my marks onto the picket, I'm going to square those lines
across and use it to mark out the rest of my posts.
This is a handy way to make sure that all the measurements on all the posts are identical.
So now we've got our marks on the post, we can transfer those lines around with the square
and we've got the setout section for our rails.
Then you can come back and work out the depths of the rail and make that mark.
I tend to put across on the piece of timber that I'm actually going to cut out.
It's a good visual reminder of the piece you'll be taking out of the post.
So now that we've marked out for the rails on all that posts, we need to cut them.
The first thing you do is set the depths of your saw.
The depths will be just slightly over the width of the rail that's going in to the post.
So now we'll put our safety gear on and cut along the lines.
I'm going to make a few cuts along here that will make chiseling out the timber easier.
The first thing I'm going to do is just chisel down the pencil line.
That will give me a nice clean edge when all the waste is gone.
Also make sure that you don't chip away at the rest of the post.
So, I'll just do the same on the other side and then we can get rid of all the middle
part.
Just use an off cut of your rail to make sure that you've checked out enough or you might
need to tidy up the whole little bit more and then just continue on.
So now that we've cut out for all our rails into the post, it's time to do the ones in
the corner.
When you have a corner post or at the end of the line, you need to do a housing joint.
This joint doesn't go all the way through like the other rails did.
It actually stops on the internal face of the post.
We mark it out just the same but we need to cut it out a little differently.
So the biggest difference with the housing joint is that we actually stop.
We don't go all the way through the rail like we did before on the other posts.
We need to stop here.
So when we put the saw in, we must stop at out our lines that we've marked out.
So once you've made your saw cuts, we just clean it out like we did with all the others.
So I've just taken the measurements between my first two posts.
Because the overall length is longer than the timber that I'm using for the rail, I'll
need to make some joints.
So you'll always join it in the center of a post.
I'm going to start with the short spin, then have a longer spin, and on the next level
I'm going to reverse that long over short, short over long.
When we make cut in the corner, we do that at a 45-degree angle so that the rail coming
from the other direction will meet in the middle.
So now we're just going to measure out the rail for the first section, make that cut,
and pop it into place.
So now that we've cut our rail, this is the 45 end that's going to go into the corner
and then we just need to nail it off.
You'll notice that the timber rails I'm using are pink color.
They are also treated pine timber but they've been primed ready for painting.
It just makes the painting process easier later on.
But now I'll just continue along this rail and do the top of the bottom as well.
So that's it.
We've set out and put our plinths in our rails in.
The next step is going to be to put the pickets on.