Pulled 40 rotted cedar pickets in Omaha and the new ones went in 3x faster with one cheap change | Fence Erectors - Freelance Forum - The Community for Independent Professionals
Pulled 40 rotted cedar pickets in Omaha and the new ones went in 3x faster with one cheap change
Last month I tore out a 6 year old cedar privacy fence in Omaha that was falling apart, posts snapped at the ground and pickets crumbling. I had 40 pickets to replace and figured it would take me two full days just like the original build did back when I put it up. But I switched from hand nailing to a $22 magnetic picket spacer I clamped on the rail, and the whole run went up in about 6 hours. The old way I was measuring each gap with a tape and fighting crooked boards, this thing just slides along and holds the gap dead on. Same crew, same lumber, same yard, the only thing that changed was that little clamp. I'm not saying it fixes bad posts, I still had 3 that had to get dug out and reset in concrete, but the picket part was night and day. Anybody else got a cheap jig that cut their install time like that?
My buddy did a similar thing on his deck railing last summer, not a fence but same idea with the spacing. He picked up one of those plastic spacer blocks from the hardware store for like 15 bucks and said it was the difference between cussing all day and actually enjoying the work. He still had to fix two saggy posts, so it doesn't solve everything, but for the boards themselves he swore it cut hours off. Sometimes the little cheap tools are the ones that surprise you.