- Today, we're gonna show you how to build six foot tall horizontal cedar. We're gonna use these 5/8
by 5 1/2 six feet tall, dog eared cedar pickets. Traditional is going vertical, we are gonna make it go horizontal. Let's dive right in we'll
show you how to do it and all the steps that we
use to make that happen. All right, so the first
step of what we're gonna do we gotta get these posts on the ground. And if you don't know what these are these are PostMaster posts. Normally you dig a hole
and you pour some concrete and stab it in the ground, no, we're not gonna do that this time. We're gonna drive it
with the Rhino driver XA. It has the PostMaster adapter on it and it slide right over the postmaster and that's how we're
gonna be able to drive it. One of the big things
to remember about when you're doing horizontal cedar fence, traditional cedar fence goes, what? What's the post basing eight foot on center horizontal
cedar fence, six foot. We wanna make sure we don't
go past that six foot spot. You could use the tape measure, or we could just throw a picket down and know that we need to
post there and a post there. Now we have our on centers marked out of where our posts need to go. One other thing that we want to do is we wanna know how many
pickets tall we're gonna be to be able to get that six foot mark. We don't want to have to go through and rip every single picket, and so we wanna leave them
all to their factory width, which is 5 1/2 inches,
5 1/2 times 11 I think is 60 1/2 inches. So that's how tall our post
needs to be out of the ground. So what we're gonna do is we're
gonna measure from the top of the post and we are
going to mark 60 1/2. You're also gonna want
just a little bit more, if you're gonna have a gate. That gate does need to be
able to swing and operate, so you're gonna want
some additional clearance I would say no more than two inches. So we'll keep that in mind
when we're driving these posts. (machine rumbling) (gentle music) See how easy that is, super easy. Even in a little bit of rocky ground. Now, if you're in really a rocky ground, I wouldn't recommend driving, I would recommend digging and setting. So now we got a post in the ground, we got them driv, we got them driven, Okay, we driv the post in the ground 'cause we're gonna take a two by four in that 60 1/2 that we
measured for our grade mark, We're gonna cut a two
by four to the 60 1/2 in length, and we're gonna
rip it right in half. We don't have a table saw with us because it's on the job site of course. So we're gonna rip one with the skill saw. (upbeat music) These are rough cut two by four, so they measure just a
little bit over them. The typical two by four
in thickness and width, so the thickness is one in three quarters, so what's gonna happen is each post, is gonna get two of these. We're gonna screw them in from the back, and these are now gonna be our nailers. What screws and hardware we're
gonna use on the cedar fence, everything is gonna be stainless steel. Why? Well, because cedar has something
in it called tannic acid and if you go and you see somebody putting up a brand new fence
and like a month later it's got those nice black streaks down it, it's because they didn't use
stainless steel, hardware. All of our screws are stainless steel and all of our nails are
stainless steel as well. (upbeat music) You know why we have
horizontal cedar fence, because that one guy that went out there and put up a brand new beautiful, vertical cedar dog ear, picket fence and the guy down this street,
he was like, I like your fence but I'm gonna do mine so
much cooler and better and that's why we have
horizontal cedar fence. And it looks pretty dang cool. So we took one, two by
four and ripped it in 1/2 and cut it to 60 1/2 inches in length. So this took one, two
by four this took one, each one of these posts
took one, two by four 'cause you wanna make
sure and put the cuts towards each other and make
sure not to put the cuts out because then everything
is nice and visible and you're gonna have that raw wood trying to keep the look nice and same. Also in case for your cuts
off just a little bit, or if the board is just
a little bit warped, then you can hide that on the inside because you're never gonna see it. Okay, so what we're gonna use to Fasten the pickets,
the Magnum nail again. So this is the one that we
have found to grow and like and these are the nails that we use, we use ring shake stainless steel nails. Why do we use ring shake? Well, because we don't use
screws, screws take a lot of time and you can have just as much of integrity and in the ring
shake as you do in the screws. The ring's on the nail, grab that wood so the nail doesn't work its way back out. So I'm deciding that I'm gonna go ahead and start from my top, and that's only because
I cited my posting off across the top of the post. So they're side in, I have a nice top and I know where my
bottom is gonna end up. My bottom should end up right
here at that black mark. All right, here we go. So I'm gonna match the top of this board with the
top of my two by four. And we're just gonna go ahead and match them up, on their ends. (upbeat music) We ripped one more, two by four, we cut up to 60 1/2 and this is
another important step. So with these pickets, what's
gonna happen, is over time, they're gonna naturally wanna warp. So one might go this way,
one might go that way and we want to try to control
that as best we possibly can. So what we're gonna do
is we're gonna nail this on the back side, we're
gonna put that halfway in between the posts. So I'm gonna take a
measurement and I got 66, so I'm gonna put it at 33. I'm gonna take my ripped side, I'm gonna put that towards my, towards Andrew. He's gonna try really
hard not to shoot me. Okay, I'm good on the bottom. - Just got a quick hintful fact, you can't really see this
without looking through the crack but just take your tape measure
and use it as a plumb bob, long as you're a two by four
on the back is straight, Just follow your tape, don't nail your tape, but straight line. - So once you put the center
stay on, what that's gonna do is that's gonna keep
those pickets from warping and boing all sorts of
different directions. Since it's a wood product, it wants to do whatever it naturally wants to do. So we're just trying to
control it at a control point. Sometimes a helpful tip, you can hold a piece of wood like this and then nail down it, so your exposed nail rings
or nail holds are nice and straight. - Pointed out. - So you could do the
tape measure thing too or you could take a piece of wood or you could take something
with a straight edge, use that as a guide for your nailer. Okay, so now we just got
done demonstrating how you build a five foot tall,
horizontal privacy fence with no air gap between the pickets. Now on this next section,
we're gonna show you how to do that with a gap
in between each picket. This section took 11
pickets, the next section, we're gonna use 10 pickets and we're gonna use a 1/2 inch air gap. Ironically, the math works
out to the point where the thickness of the
picket is exactly the gap that we're gonna need, to
be able to make this work and still start at the same point, and then at the same point, we're just gonna have a 1/2 inch gap in between each picket. - Purely by luck. - Purely by a luck, we
did not plan I mean, we planned that out then. - This is what happens
when you're professionals. - We're gonna use this piece as a spacer, it's the top of a picket but we're gonna start from the top we're gonna work our way down. (upbeat music) Okay, so now we're gonna go
ahead and nail on our stay, now I'll go to the bottom same thing. Harder not higher. So like we said, the math
just so happened to work out on this, that we are able to keep the post at the same height and run that gap in it. Make sure to pre-measure
everything and do all your math before you get ready to build your fence, to see how tall those posts need to be a traditional cedar fence, your post is lower and
your pickets are taller but when you're going horizontal that post needs to go all the way to the top so whether
you need a taller post if you're gonna drive
your post don't forget that you're posting to go on the ground, and you gotta drive, you
know, X amount of post on the ground to compensate
for that concrete which here we drove three feet. Actually two feet, six,
it's still rock solid. Andrew is complaining about
how ugly the front looks, he says it doesn't look finished. I don't see the problem. We need to cover it up, we
need to hide all the ugliness that's what he is talking about. So what we did is we took a picket and we cut it down to what again, 60 1/2. (upbeat music) Now we're not gonna go
putting a whole bunch of nails in because this is more of a trim piece to bring out the beauty. So we're gonna do it to a top two in the middle and two at the bottom. And that'll Fasten that
picket on there just fine. We had to hide all the
stuff on the front side but we still have a bare metal
post on the back side even though it's a horizontal
fence, we still need to hide that post because
nobody wants to see that either. And that's the really cool thing about using a postmaster post
is you still get a metal post and you can 100% cover the thing up. So it's a beautiful brand new fence but nobody wants to see the post, that's what the pickets for. The only place that you
can see it is right here, just a little bit. It's a far better
product than a wood post, and it's gonna last exponentially, a lot longer than wood post. And if the wind blows really hard, it's gonna break off
like a wood post would. We just showed you how we
build our horizontal seater, this is a five foot
example, no air gap, air gap and we cannot stress enough the importance of using a PostMaster post. Make sure you see the
video about why they're so important and why we
love them right here. Dealing with Swi, we are Wyoming Fence Company
and you have a good dang day. (dramatic music)
