As part of our last project of 2007, we (my dad and I) desperately wanted to change our rickety fence. It was about to fall over anyway, and pieces of the fence had been chipping off.

It turned out the project actually ended up the first few days of 2008, but I still counted it as 2007, so we were very eager to get it done. As we did, however, I learned some great new tricks about wood-working.

1. The tops of the boards were amazingly annoying to line up perfectly. We didn’t want to make one high and one low, so my dad came up with an idea: two thumbnails on opposite ends of the entire fence, with a heavy object at one end of the winded up string.
   I perfected it by undoing the loops that had been put in at the ends. Now, I found, one could actually lift the string, and the heavy object would go up from weighing down the ends in order to compensate. Best of all, when you let go, it bounced back into its straight position again.
2. To make the width between boards the same, and to keep them straight, we used something amazingly simple: a small flat block of wood.
   My dad used his chainsaw and cut them into two small pieces, one at the top, and one at the bottom. Because of this, at the end, it looked so beautifully flat.
3. Boards. So hard to make them nice and straight. Not, in fact, slanted or tilted. But how does one know? The answer was simple. Since we had ripped off all the boards, they were of no use (they were old and chipping, confusing us anyway).
   In the end, we got a small heavy object (a lead sinker would work well) and tied a string to it. Then we balanced it and waited for it to stop moving. This level worked perfectly, even better than a bubble level, which couldn’t have helped in the situation.
4. Being extremely careful on the first board of a fence is crucial. On ours, the first one was ever so slightly tilted, but it ended up the rest were all slanted.
5. When aligning the first (top or bottom) hinge, then you want to make sure it is very exact, especially when the two hinges (usually there are two) are further apart. One tiny little tilt and your next hinge will end up miles away, if, perhaps, the next hinge is far apart.
6. When putting in nails, do so with a sledgehammer behind it. It will minimize the shaking and pressure on the base board. Don’t try to whack the sledgehammer it at the same time the actual hammer is doing it; just hold it there. Your mind can’t predict the exact time it will hit, anyway.
   The hammer will bounce; that’s okay. The impact has already been minimized.
7. This would probably be a runner-up if this was a contest, but I think I should mention it anyway. Do three nails on each board in the pattern of a V, putting one nail at each corner or end.
   Even if you are not going to do that, don’t change nail patterns in the middle. And then there’s a trade-off: if you align them, it would look pretty, but could cause the board to split off into two pieces because of the intense pressure.
   On the other hand, making them a \ or a / would mean sacrificing from some simple beauty. Pick one.

That pretty much sums up my list. Enjoy!