Rails, pickets and board feet

The rest of the material list: how many rails, the length to cut them, how many pickets, and what the run costs per board foot.

Worked example: 100 ft, 2 rails, 5.5 in pickets

Getting the picket gaps even

A run rarely divides exactly by the picket width plus the gap. Two approaches both work: adjust the gap by a few hundredths of an inch and leave it at that, or hold the gap and accept a slightly wider space at one end. The calculator tells you the gap that divides the run evenly: usually it is within a sixteenth of an inch of where you started.

What you should not do is install pickets at a fixed pitch and then squeeze the last few together. Even spacing is the thing people notice on a picket fence, more than the size of the gap itself.

Rails: cut length matters

Rails span between posts, so each cut is the bay spacing less the width of one post. On an 8 ft bay with 6x6 posts that is 7.54 ft: cut them all at once with a stop block rather than measuring each one. If you are buying 8 ft rails and cutting, plan for the offcuts; if you are buying 16 ft and cutting two per length, you get less waste but need to handle longer boards.

Board feet

Yards price framing timber by the board foot: thickness in inches × width in inches × length in feet ÷ 12. It is the unit that lets you compare a price list against your own quantities. Enter your yard's price per board foot for rails and the shopping list will total it; do the same for pickets and posts to complete the estimate.