I'm using the cool South Carolina "winter" to finish the wooden fence around my backyard. In this edition I install about 70 feet of fence line, sans the gate. I will probably dedicate a whole future Memphis Monday video to installing at least one of the gates.
The fence we build today is scratch built using deck 4x4's, two 6x6's, 180 5/8x5 1/2x6' fence pickets, 24 2x4's, and finally well over 2000 hot dipped ring shank nails.
Previously I had used pre-assembled fence panels, but I wasn't totally satisfied. Here's why:
1. The pre-assembled fence panels are bulky, heavy, and nearly impossible to move into place alone. I've done it many times, but it requires jigs and rigging invested for no real advantage. In short, you can nail the pickets into place about as fast, with much less effort.
2. The stringers in the prefab panels is only 2 inches wide, which results in sagging of those horizontal parts. I upgraded to select 2x4's.
3. The pickets on the prefab panels are spaced at 4 1/4 inches, which puts the panel count at 20, and leaves only about 1/2 inch nailing room on each side of the top boards. I reduced the spacing to between 2 and 3 inches, which both increased the board count per panel, and provided a stronger nailing edge on the top boards.