This year I made a fence for the cemetery.
I blaintly stole ideas from everybody!
I'd like to give the most credit to:
Just the first pic of the completed fence
Another pic of the completed fence
I started with 1/2 in PVC cut to 40 inches long
This pile did 32 feet of fence
Glue on some skull whistles for finials
I carved out a little of the top of the PVC with my dremel tool so that the whistle would fit better.
Ready for a coat of paint
No overspray here!
Quick coat of black flat enamel paint
Here is an almost completed section of the fence. As you can see the PVC is inserted into 1/2 furring strip after drilling a 7/8 inch hole every 6 inches (I looked at doing it every 8 inches to save on material, but it didn't look natural)
Later I checked come real iron fences and the spacing was 6 inches on all of them.
7/8 inch hole was a little big so I had to drive a screw into each section of PVC
(Earlier I tried a 13/16 drill bit, but the holes it made were a bit too snug and I broke 2 furring stips trying to shove the PVC in)
OK, time to start on the columns. First I cut a 1/2 sheet of plywood into 2 pieces 11 inches wide by 4 foot tall and 2 pieces 12 inches wide by 4 foot tall.
Think those measurements a bit strange, do you? Well, as you can see I used 2x2s (4 feet long) to screw the sheets of plywood together. By making 2 of them 11 inches wide and then adding the two 1/2 inch sides of the other sheets, I got a 12 inch by 12 inch by 4 foot tall box.(one side removed for clarity)
Here's a view from the top looking inside.
Here's what they look like, pretty simple so far!
Whoops! Looks like I skipped a few steps. I added 2x6 pressure treated lumber to the base and 2x4 lumber to the top. After gluing on the pink insulating board to the support structure, I drew where I wanted the mortar lines
After drawing where I wanted the mortar lines, I carved out the pink foam with a soldering iron
A pic of after I carved out the mortar lines. This gave the stones a 'raised' look
But they were too smooth to be real stones. I used a propane torch and lightly grazed the pink foam to give it a little depth
I painted the mortar lines black (Not very realistic, but I think they look nice)
Finally! A little sponge painting to finish the stones and here is a Picture of the 6 completed smaller columns
A close up of one of the completed pilsters. If you look carefully (or click on the pic) you can see the L bracket that the top rail of the fence sections hang from.
Here they are in storage in my garage. You'd better make sure you have a lot of room to store these things! As you can see in this Picture, I have the two large gate section and three of the six fence sections. I need more shelving to finish.
Here's a close up of the L brackets that the fence sections hang off of
Just a quick pic of the arch. I didn't take any Pictures of the construction but the letters are carved out of pink foam, painted and glued onto a piece of curved plywood