Fence Made From Rebar and Douglas Fir Wood

Last year I promised to someone that I would make a fence for her backyard. But then first the shops were closed during lock down and when the shops reopened the roads around her house were closed for construction works. I decided that I would make the fence now during summer as the weather allows me to work outside in the sun and right now I have time as it is the holiday period. Therefore I will temporary install the fence in my own backyard and move it to her backyard probably in autumn when the construction works around her house will be ready. This gives me some time to enjoy the fence myself. I made some photos of the fence during the day but also close to sunset. At that time it gives a nice pattern of shade on the deck.

I made 4 posts and 2 fence sections in this Instructable.

The materials for each post are:
- 1 piece of Douglas fir wood of 9x9 cm and 92 cm long as main part of the post.
- 1 piece of Douglas fir wood of 13x13 cm and 2.5 cm thick as cap.
- 1 piece of Douglas fir wood of 22x22 cm and 2.5 cm thick as base.
- 2 dowels of 6x30 mm to connect the cap to the post.
- 2 screws of 100 mm long and 5 mm thick to connect the base to the post.
- 2 pieces of rebar of 18 or 26 cm long and 16 mm thick to connect the fence sections to the post.
- Wood glue to also glue the cap and base to the post.
- Black varnish for the wood.
- Black paint for the rebar.

I collected all the wood that I needed and placed it on the deck. I bought the wood as longer pieces so I still had to cut all pieces to the right length.

On the photo you can also see a dolphin. I made that one last year and also wrote an Instructable about how I made it. You can check my previous Instructables to see it in more detail. The support of the dolphin is made of exactly the same rebar as what I am using for the fence. The paint on the rebar of the dolphin is also the same paint that I used for the pickets. The rebar under the dolphin has no signs of rust yet while it has been outside for more than one year already so I am confident that the rebar in the fence will not rust very soon.

I made the rails 182 cm long. That size is based on the size of the backyard where the fence will go.

The vertical side of the fence I made 70 cm. I chose that length because the rebar is 75 cm long so I have 2.5 cm at each side of the rebar for it to go into the holes which I will drill in the rails.

I cut the main part of the post to a length of 92 cm because I want the posts to be higher than the fence sections. The fence sections are 70 cm + 2x7 cm for the rails, so 84 cm high.

The cap is 13x13 cm. I wanted the caps to be wider than the posts and the posts are 9x9 cm. Since I had a piece of wood of 26 cm wide, I chose for 13 cm as that made it easy to cut the wood in half to get the desired size.

For the base I chose 22x22 cm so I would have enough space to drill holes to connect the base to the deck.

Here is an overview of the pieces of wood that I cut. On one photo I placed the pieces roughly on the place where each of them would end up. On the other photo I placed the pieces in groups of the same size.

I used a transparent varnish for the fence sections and a black varnish for the parts of the posts. I did not paint the areas of the posts where I will use wood glue during assembly.

I gave the parts two coats of varnish with 24 hours between coats.

When I would do this project again, I would first drill the holes and paint the wood after that.

I bought the rebar already cut to the right size of 75 cm. This rebar is not for sale in a regular shop but a construction company was willing to sell this rebar to me.

I painted all metal parts with a paint especially made for painting metal.

Actually I painted these pieces some weeks ago and gave them two coats of paint. Since the paint already had several weeks to dry it had fully cured and hardened before I installed the metal parts of the fence.

I only decided about how I would connect the fence sections to the posts at this stage of the project. I had some extra rebar so I decided to cut some shorter pieces and make pins that will go through the posts into the fence sections.

I used an angle grinder to cut 4 pieces of 18 cm and 2 pieces of 26 cm. The two longest ones are for the post in the middle as that one has two fence sections connected to it.

An angle grinder leaves a sharp edge so I used a flap disk on a grinder to round off the sharp edges.

I used the same paint for metal to paint the short pieces of rebar that I had just cut. These pieces did not have several weeks to dry so the paint got slightly damaged when I installed the pins. My advice is therefore to allow the paint two weeks to fully harden before using the pins.

I placed the rebar pickets on top of the wooden frame to see if I liked the way it looked.

On this photo it is also visible that the rebar is long enough to go into the holes which I will drill in the wood.

My rails are 182 cm long but at each side 7 cm will be needed to screw the vertical part onto. So I have 182 - 14 cm = 168 cm where I have to drill the holes for the rebar. I decide to use 8 cm between each centre of the rebar and 4 cm at each side. So when I started measuring from the inside of the vertical part, I marked the holes at 4 - 12 - 20 - 28 - 36 - 44 - 52 cm and continuing with 8 cm between the marks.
I also marked where the middle was, so at 3.5 cm from each side as this wood is 7 cm wide.

Since my rebar is 75 cm long and the inner height of the fence is only 70 cm, I had to drill holes that where 2.5 cm deep.
I marked the drill bits with masking tape slightly above 2.5 cm so the rebar would for sure fit in the holes.
I first drilled a small hole and after that a larger hole of 18 mm. My rebar has a core width of 16 mm but the outer diameter is 18 mm.
While I was pauzing the drilling to take a photo our chicken passed by to see what I was doing.

I continued with the posts and mounted the base plate. I used screws and wood glue since this has to be a strong connection. I predrilled the holes for the screws in the base plate and also drilled 4 holes of 10 mm for the bolts to be able to bolt the posts to the deck.

For the top cap I did not use screws but I used dowels instead as they will not be visible when looking on top of the cap.

I have some pins the size of a dowel and they help to mark where the hole for the dowel has to be.

Since I did not have long clamps I just placed the posts upside down after gluing so the weight of the post would give some pressure on the glue. It was not the amount of pressure I would have liked to have on this glue, but since the cap is only present to protect the end grain of the post from the rain and for decoration, it does not have to be very strong.

In a previous step I showed the short pieces of rebar that I made as connecting pins between the fence sections and the posts. Now I placed the vertical beam of the frame of the fence against the post and used a clamp to hold it in the right spot. I put a short cut-off piece of wood under the vertical beam to simulate the horizontal rail and under that I placed another piece of wood to simulate the free area under the fence section.

Then I used a very long drill bit to drill a pilot hole all the way through both the vertical beam and the post. As the long drill bit is a bit flexible, it was hard to keep it fully perpendicular to the wood during drilling and it did not end up completely straight. Fortunately that does not really matter, because although my pins are not going through the wood perfectly perpendicular, they do make sure that the vertical beam is exactly where I wanted it to be.

I marked which beam was connected to which side of which posts when I drilled all the way through and made sure during the assembly of the fence that each section was connected to the right post.

Without such a long drill bit it would be harder to drill a hole to get everything aligned, but with careful measuring and drilling straight it should be possible. Using a drill press can also be a solution.

After drilling the small pilot holes I used the large drill bit to get the holes large enough for the pins. It should be a good fit so the pins can slide in without too much effort but when they are in place they should not have much play. So they should only be able to slide in one direction and not be able to wiggle a lot.

I would advise to drill one hole in a leftover piece first to check this. It is better to use a slightly too small drill bit and then enlarge the hole with a file instead of using a too large drill bit.

Now it is time to assemble the fence sections. At least that is what I thought when I built the fence, but looking back it would have been better to do the next step first. So first drill the holes for the screws and place the pickets after that.

I placed one of the rails on the deck and put a piece of wood under the pickets so they lign up with the holes. Getting the pickets to go into the holes of the other rail was a two man job. It worked best to start at one side guiding the first picket into its hole and then move on to the next. It took some persuasion from a rubber mallet but after a few minutes all of the pickets where in place.

Like I wrote at the previous step, it would have been better to drill the holes for the screws before placing the pickets. That is also what I did for the second fence section. But for the first fence section I drilled the holes for the screws while the fence was laying flat on the deck so there was no convenient space for my drill while drilling the lowest hole.

A second mistake was to use the long drill bit. A regular drill bit was just long enough and not that flexible. It is best to drill this hole slightly larger that the outer diameter of the threads on the screw so the screw will be able to pull the rail firmly to the vertical beam. (With a smaller hole for the screw in the rail you will get a gap between the rail and the beam as the screw would then not be able to pull at the rail, because the rail cannot slide over the screw. )

I made sure the fence was square before inserting the screws.

With the second fence section I knew what worked best, so I first drilled the holes for the screws and then placed the pickets so this section was easier to assemble.

Then I screwed the black angles in place. I did not have to drill any holes for these small screws.

The purpose of the black angles is mainly for decoration, but I think they also help to keep the fence square.

I used M8 nuts and bolts to bolt the post to the deck. I did not have to drill any holes in the deck as the bolts fit through the gaps in the deck. I had that in mind when I drilled the holes for the bolts in the base of the post, because the fence will be relocated to the backyard of the lady for whom I made the fence and I do not want to have holes in my deck after the fence will be gone.

When the first post was in place and the pins were in the holes, we carried the first section of the fence to it's position, placed it on some pieces of wood to get the pin aligned with the hole and then we slid the fence section sideways to the post. That was very easy to do, so we immediately placed the second post, slid the pins into that one, bolted the post to the deck and in just a few minutes the first section of the fence was ready.

After that we placed the second section in the same way.

As a finishing touch I mixed some sawdust with wood glue and filled the area above the screws with this mixture. It is an easy way to hide the screws and maybe it also helps to prevent corrosion of the screws.

Another finishing touch which I am still considering, is to seal the gaps between the pickets and the wood of the bottom rails. Now water enters into this gap when it rains so the wood gets wet inside. However, when it stops raining the water can also easily evaporate from this gap.

If I seal the gap and water still finds a way to enter somewhere, it cannot evaporate easily. Also Douglas fir wood is supposed to be quite weather resistant even without any coating, so I wonder if it would be needed to seal the gap.

I made 4 posts while I needed only 3 of them for the fence. The 4th one is meant for the gate which I already made last year. I did document all steps of the construction of the gate, so maybe I will make a separate Instructable about that.

The gate is already at the house of the lady for whom I made the fence, but she does not live close to my house, so I cannot yet make a photo of the fence including the gate. After the construction works around her house will have finished I will move the fence to her house and install it including the gate at her backyard.

The dog on the gate looks a lot like the dog she owns so that is why the dog is pictured on the gate.