Shim mark: a pair of opposing wedges

Sawdust and Shims

A working journal of small repairs, paint and trim, written a job at a time.

Outdoors

Work that has to survive weather, frost and ground that moves.

9 February 2014

Setting a fence post that stays where you put it

Cutaway diagram of a fence post in a hole, showing gravel at the base, backfill around the post and a sloped collar at ground level directing water away.
A post set with its collar shaped to shed water away from the timber.

Filed under Outdoors

A fence post fails at ground level, almost without exception. It does not rot at the bottom, where people expect it to, and it rarely snaps in the middle. It goes where air and water meet the timber together, in the band just above and just below the surface, and everything about setting a post well is really about managing water at that band.

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Labels

  • Paint and Finishes (4)Brushwork, sheen, sanding between coats and the things that go wrong on the second pass.
  • Walls and Trim (3)Plaster and board repairs, finding what is behind the surface, and fitting trim to rooms that are out of true.
  • Floors (3)Boards, thresholds, squeaks and the preparation that decides how a floor behaves later.
  • Tools and Materials (3)What a tool is actually for, what a first kit needs, and keeping an edge worth using.
  • Outdoors (1)Work that has to survive weather, frost and ground that moves.