Building a corrugated fence, Oct 17

Decided to work on a new project tonight. A corrugated steel fence to go around what will be my scrap yard. Never done one before so I thought I would try some heavy duty aluminum foil. Turns out it’s just not sturdy enough. My wife gave me one of her disposable loaf pans and suggested I try it. Hmmmm.

First step was to cut the bottom out since that appeared to be the flattest and smoothest part.

Once I saw that this was going to work, I started to work on the support structure. I decided on 6×6 styrene strips for the posts and 2×6 strips for the support beams that would hold it all together. I made a template with some foam core by laying down a strip of masking tape then marking lines every 10′ for the post holes. I used the tip of a small screw driver to make the holes, which was just the same size as the posts.

I cut my posts to a little over 9′ long, so to have a fence that was 8′ tall.

Next step was to insert the posts, and glue the cross brace across the top making sure it lined up with the line I had drawn across the posts at the top and bottom.

Set that aside to dry and now it was time to work on the corrugation. I trimmed the bottom of the pan so all sides were nice and square, then used a small square and a pencil to draw depressions in the metal. I was going to measure each line precisely to get them lined up perfectly but then I just did it by eye and that really was close enough, given the scale.

After all the grooves were drawn, I cut the piece 8′ tall and used some CA to glue the sheet to the posts.

This is what it looks like without any weathering. That comes later. After gluing both pieces to the fence I used my handy dandy favorite clamps to get everything glued up and set overnight.

Once it’s all weathered, I will remove the entire fence carefully from the template, then use the holes to mark the location on the layout where the fence will go. Glue it in place and then start on the next section. By the way, that section is a scale 80′ long.