Hayfield / yard fence rebuild

It took me just short of a month (as I only worked on the rebuild part of each day), but I finished the rebuild of the fence between the front yard and the hayfield one week ago.  Now I don't have to worry about the cattle breaking the fence and going between the yard and hayfield (which they have done a few times over the years).

If you remember, last year I rebuilt - with old rails - a small section of the fence back near the patio.  

Last year.

I liked the look and liked how strong the rebuilt fence became.  So when the fencing company had a bundle of rails on sale this Summer at a low price, I jumped at the chance and bought the bundle.  I'm glad I did.  

90 rails.  I counted.

The former yard/hayfield fence needed to be repainted.  But I didn't repaint it because a number of boards were old and weak and needed to be replaced and not repainted.  And new boards wouldn't match the old boards as the new boards would be decades younger than the old boards.  So a totally new fence was needed.

I mentioned in a previous post that each section of fence took me two and a half hours on average to rebuild.  The former fence had fence posts usually 8 feet apart.  The fence boards were either 8 feet long or 16 feet long. A number of two 8 foot fence post sections had a mix of 8 foot boards and 16 foot boards.  Why?  I don't know.  My new sections are 16 feet long as that is how long the rails are.  The fence posts are still 8 feet apart as I don't trust a 16 foot section of rails would hold up against the cattle pressing on them.

Over half of the fence posts had to be replaced.  All these bad fence posts seemed to be doing was to hold the fence boards apart, and mostly up.  Over time I had to lean some metal posts against the old fence to hold some sections of the fence from leaning over. These bad posts were mainly rotten at the top of the ground so they were easy to remove.  I left the rotted part of the post in the ground.  For the posts that were still good to use, I had to dig them out and then put them back in the ground.  That was because the rebuilt fence, to be completely straight, was moved over about a foot into the yard.

The new rails are thick.  I don't have nails long enough to adequately nail the rails to the fence posts.  So I ended up cutting part of the rails to thin them where they were nailed to the posts.  That was part of why each section took so long to rebuild.  As I got closer to my house I could run an extension cord and use a power saw to help make the cuts.  Before that I had to use a handsaw to cut each section.

End fence post section.  Cut by a handsaw.

Middle fence post section. The section was cut by a handsaw into smaller sections, then chipped out.

As you can see, the rail is still thick enough.

The former fence didn't have any gates in it.  No problem as with my long legs I could easily get over the fence.  The rebuilt fence is taller.  And with wire added between the rails it is hard to climb over the fence.  So I added two gates.  I had an extra 10 foot gate so I added it in the middle of the fence. The gate I had was either never used, or they used the original length of gate bolts.  My fence post was thick and I needed to readjust the nuts of the gate bolts.  I had to use lots of WD-40 on the bolts as the original paint was stopping the nuts from turning.  As you can see paint still stayed in the grooves after I turned the nut.  But I got it adjusted.

I used a 10 foot gate as I didn't have an 8 foot gate.  So the 10 foot gate threw the last section off.  Instead of an 8 foot section as the last section, I had about a 5 foot section in the end.  Hmmmm.... another gate would be nice.  I went and bought a 4 foot gate.

Originally I planned on rebuilding the one section of fence I had rebuilt last year in order to make it longer and reach the gate.  This meant finding 9 foot rails to replace the 8 foot rails. I also decided to replace the fence post with a thicker post.  But then after I put the newer post into the ground I decided it was good.  No need to find longer fence rails and rebuild that section of fence.  Two fence posts work and don't look bad.

I had the gate in place before I started to add wire to the rails.  Again that took me a number of days as I only spent a few hours each day working on cutting and adding wire to the fence rails. I have a habit of sometimes climbing over the gate instead of opening it and walking through it.  One time as I climbed on the gate the top bolt came out of the fence post.  This was an original fence post I had reused and the top of the post was not completely solid.  It was solid enough to nail a rail to it and have it hold.  But it was not strong enough to have an extra 175 pounds on the gate for a minute or two.  So I had to replace this fence post with another thicker and more solid fence post.  And I need to try to go through a gate more often and not climb over it.

This is why I added wire to my rail fence.  Not that I was worried about my tree, but when a big cow or bull reaches through the fence to get to the grass on the other side and push, that is how the rails can break.

Wire.  No wire.  (until I later added it.)

Old fence and new fence.

This fence done... now to get to work to rebuild the fence along the driveway.   ...if the ground doesn't stay frozen.