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Four years in the making………………., it had a simple beginning as a simple pile of pallets at my local siding world.
This is no ordinary pile of pallets, these are 12 ½ foot by 4 foot pallets, that’s not a typo I said 12 ½ feet. I was able to disassemble a number of the pallets and had a nice stack of lumber for my cemetery fence. Unfortunately that pile of wood sat for four years while other props and life took precedent.
I initially wanted to make my main two fence panels 8 foot high gracefully curving to 4 feet by 8 foot long, and as many secondary panels 4 foot high by 8 foot long, this had to change, more about this later. After doing research on the forums both Halloween and woodworking I determined how I was going to make my top rails of my fence. They were going to be bent lamination, bent laminations are just thin slices of wood glued into the shape you want. After cutting the 8 inch wide pallet boards into 2 ½ wide boards, I then sliced them into 20+ 2 ½ by 3/16[SUP]th[/SUP] thick strips.
I then cut the remaining wood into 7/8[SUP]th[/SUP] inch square pickets, where I did simple pyramid top. My Wife and Son pre-painted the pickets to make it easier to assemble and finish painting later.
The next step was to make my form for the upper rails of the fence. Since I wanted the curve of the top rail to be symmetrical, I drew half the curve out on poster board adding 4 inches to the end that would be adjacent to the pillars. This was for an offset for the pieces of 3 inch PVC pipe I was going to use for decoration. I then starting assembling pieces of 2 x 6 boards to match the final shape of the upper rail. Then using the pattern I transferred the curve of the top rail to the form, flipping it at the midpoint to complete my top rail, I then repeated this ¾ inch away from my first line. Using a jigsaw I cut just to the waste side of the lines, then using my belt sander I sanded to the line. At this point I realized that the width of my form was only had 1 ¾ inches but I had 2 ½ wide strips. I then added pieces of ¾ inch plywood to bring my form to the proper width of 2 ½ inches. I then coated the mating surfaces of the form with clear packing tape so glue would not stick to it. Finally added some clamping guides and my form was done.
