My £10 per metre FRUGAL FENCE using rebar

this is a pretty big drop and it's always felt a little bit dangerous especially when there's kids running around the garden so I want to build some kind of fence along here but this is 12 m in length and that would take a lot of Timber and cost a lot of money and it would also restrict our views across the garden from our kitchen I have some old salvaged roof patterns that came off our roof last year they look a bit ropey with some nail holes in them but this is good quality Redwood Timber as you can see by the tight growth rings here and they measure 38 by 25 mm I start by cutting a 45° angle on the end of a few longer pieces and then to figure out the length I want each panel to be dividing the total length I need for the fence by six means I'll need six panels measuring 1,950 mil so I can then cut the longer pieces to length then my delivery showed up this is 12 mm rebar normally used for reinforcing concrete but I'm going to use this as railings in my fence panels it comes in 6 M lengths and it's surprisingly cheap I'll talk about the costs for this later in the video next I'm going to make a simple jig that will allow me to cut the rebar to consistent lengths I want to cut some short pieces measuring just shy of 400 mm so that I can get 15 of them out of each six M length of rebar and I want to cut a v Grove in this so I did that at the table saw [Music] I can then clamp this to the end of the rebar and use the end of The Jig as a guide for cutting each piece to size I'm also going to need some longer pieces so I'm cutting these to roughly 950 mm in length and these ones don't need to be so accurate so no jig required I picked up some of this red oxide primer specifically because I read that it could be used directly over surface rust however on the back of the can it says clean area to be treated of any dirt rust or grease so then I thought about soaking all these pieces of rebar in some white vinegar but I've checked the cupboard and we only have about that much so what I think I'm going to try is soaking it in some white Spirit which I do have I think it'll help to remove any contaminants that might be on the steel and clean it up ready for primer and paint I've also got one of these brass bristled brushes so I'm going to give each one a bit of a scrub before I dry them off I wouldn't recommend using white Spirit to clean off rust there are much better Solutions like these products which I'll leave links to below a very light surface rust did reappear after cleaning but I was confident that they were now clean enough so hopefully this should be okay and I can reuse this white spirit for something else in future it was quite interesting to see how worn down my brass brush was once finished now I can get the red oxide primer on and once each coating is dry I rotate each piece by about 120° and coat them again so basically it's spray twist spray twist spray and then they're all nicely coated back to my wooden frames now and it's time to drill out some holes for the rebar to sit in I want the railings to be evenly spaced and around 100 mm apart which is pretty standard for most other railings that I've seen and obviously I want my railings to be child friendly I don't want anyone getting their head stuck in between them and I want my holes to be 20 mm deep this is a 14 mm or bit I can then eyeball the center and make some marks and start drilling them out the rebar fits in with a bit of wiggle room so this is perfect I can then get the longer bits of rebar cleaned and primed and to remove any burs from the ends from cutting I just sand them gently at 45° at the belt sander before priming the ends again and then it's on with the top coat and I'm using some satin black paint all of this wood is rough sa so I'm sanding with a coarse 40 grit disc I'm not going for a high-end finish here at all I just want to remove any splintery bits and clean them up a bit I want to retain some of that rustic character the wood is pressure treated but I'm going to use some wood preserver to treat all of the areas where I've made cuts to keep them protected from insects and rot normally I'd treat the rest of the wood too but I was running really low on preserver but I can do that sometime in future I'm inserting some of the short pieces of rebar here just so I can take a reference measurement for cutting the rest of my pieces to complete the mited wooden frame I add about 3 or 4 mm to this measurement just to make sure there's a bit of wiggle room so that I don't have any issues getting the frames together when it comes to assembling them and this time I'm cutting the pieces at the table saw I had planned to do this project outside with a circular saw that was until it started raining but a benefit of using the table saw for this is that I can use the stop on my miter gauge to get c a consistent length without the need for measuring so that's all of my components prepped and that took a lot longer than I expected I've also realized that there might be a problem with my original design so let me explain so this is how I originally designed the panels if you can just imagine that these poles are actually sitting inside the wooden frame and these longer pieces of rebar were going to be at each end of the panel meaning that two of the holes in the bottom rail were going to need to be drilled all of the way through but luckily I haven't done that yet and I I say luckily because it has occurred to me that the weight of all of this rebar coupled with the fact that these Timbers are only 38 mm wide and on each panel they'll be spanning almost 2 m I don't think it'd be too long before these Timbers start to Sag in the middle fortunately though I think there's an easy solution to this and that's to position the long ones a little bit more Central like so or maybe here would be best yeah I think I like that better and that's just going to help distribute the weight of all of this rebar across the span of each panel and the idea behind having this rebar protruding through the bottom rail and into the ground is just because steel is going to last much longer than Timber these panels are going to be sitting above a lawn which is often going to be wet and wet grass growing up against Timber is likely to cause rot so now I can just drill out the holes in this bottom rail and I can finally get these panels assembled I'm using polyurethane glue because it works great for exterior use I'll leave a link to this in the description and I'm using a couple of decking screws to secure Each corner and by the way none of these screws will be visible on the finished fence and I'll explain why later assembling the panels upright like this I thought would be easier but it definitely wasn't so I ended up laying them down flat I was really surprised at how quick and easy these were to assemble even though it had took a lot of work getting all of the components prepared putting them together was a duddle then I decided to mix up some te oil with some white Spirit just to help nourish the wood and I'm doing this mainly just so that it looks nicer right time to get these panels installed I think it's amazing that I get to do all of these Woodworking and Home Maintenance projects and actually earn a living from it and if that's the kind of thing that might interest you I have a new online course all about how to turn your passion for video making into a jobby rather than a hobby if you sign up you'll get two hours of video content covering all of the topics that I'll put somewhere on screen plus access to an exclusive Forum where you can chat with other like-minded video creators it's called the brutally honest content creator course and it draws from my 9 years experience on YouTube plus learnings from industry experts so if you're interested I'll leave a link in the description box please do check it out I'm laying out my panels one by one just to check I got my measurements correct and it looked spoton I also built this small end panel so that I can do a slight return at the end which will add strength and rigidity to the structure I thought about setting a string line but then I realized that the top of this wall here is really straight so I decided to have a go up building a jig so that I can set the fence panels to reference from the wall I'll need a couple of pieces to sit over the capping stones and then a couple of bits of pallet wood to join those two pieces together and these two scraps of MDF get screwed to the underside these will be what supports the weight of the fence panels when positioning them I can clamp this down to the capping stones and then the fence panel can sit on top I made a mistake here though which will become apparent very soon I hate digging so I bought one of these 100 mm diameter a bits I'll leave a link to this in the description box if works brilliantly I can mark the position of the holes using some spray paint and get to work with the orur bit and then I can just scoop out any excess soil with my hand these holes are around 350 mm deep and I want to fill the hole with about a third of clean water and I have some post mix here this is my first time ever using post mix I've had loads of experience with concrete over the years but I wanted to try this stuff mainly because it sets a lot quicker it isn't as strong but I don't need this fence to stop tanks driving through it it just needs to stop a toddler getting too close to the edge of the wall after adding the post mix I can agitate it a bit with a stick and mix it all together and then I can keep adding more water and post mix as necessary the beauty of using this jig is that it sets both the height of the fence panel and also the distance to the wall so the only thing I needed to check for level was my verticals it's surprising how quick this stuff firms up it gives you just enough time to get everything where it needs to be and then it's pretty solid and here's where I realized that my jig has a problem I can't get it out the solution multi-tool to the rescue and this is why I call it the get you out of trouble [Music] tool [Music] I found working with post mix really simple and effective I'll definitely use it again next I have some of these pressure treated capping rails to fit which I got from my local Timber yard and fitting these from the center out is going to give me the best overlap over the panels these rails are going to do three things they'll hide the screws at the top they'll help shed the water off the panels because of the slope and they will lock all of the panels together so that they can't simply be lifted Out and because the post miix isn't at full strength yet I drilled pilot holes before nailing them in and used my smallest Hammer just to minimize vibration while fitting so it's been a couple of days I don't like the way that this end panel looks with this Gap underneath it so I made this which is made up of more of the same slats to fill the Gap so I've picked up some 12 mil stainless steel saddle clips and some stainless steel screws to fix this in place meanwhile at the other end I found this steel angle plate in a drawer and I've used that to secure the other end of the fence so that it doesn't wobble around I am absolutely over the moon with how this project turned out and I'm also really happy with the view across the garden from the house the rebar was just 8 lb for 6 M length and I used eight lengths which is 64 lb I got through about 2 cans of the red oxide primer and about three cans of the black spray paint coming to around 25 seven of the 1.8 m long capping rails which came to £ 13 four bags of post mix was £22 and I spent a fiver on those saddle clips and stainless steel screws everything else like the salvaged wood I had already but roof patterns are pretty cheap so if you wanted to build something similar it shouldn't break the bank so the total cost £129 I think that's a real bargain I want to thank my mate Aiden at the Aiden project for the inspiration on this one he made a fence using rebar a few years ago and that's what gave me the idea thanks for [Music] watching [Music]

Channel: Rag 'n' Bone Brown

Views: 154,686

Keywords: woodworking, uk, british, youtuber, keith, salvaged, reclaimed, wood, make, making, how, to, ragnbonebrown, diy, rag n bone brown, rag & bone brown

Id: er0NE7i5xLU

Length: 14min 4sec (844 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 15 2024