Tag: lattice fence

How to build a Lattice Fence for Gazebo

On By zenoIn Outdoor furnituresLeave a comment

Hi All ! This post is about the process of building a lattice fence for a gazebo. I’ll show you in a few steps how I’ve built the lattice fence for my gazebo from my yard.

I assume that everybody has seen a lattice fence already, but it’s important to remark that they are different. Some of them has an overlapping wood structure, while others can be a bit more complex and have an interleaving wood  structure like the one from the below  picture.

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Interleaving structure
lattice fence
Overlapping structure
 Building the jig

The goal of the project is clear now, so let’s get to work!

In order to  make the interleaving wood structure I had to build a jig first. The purpose of this jig is to ensure  that I’m able to do some perpendicular and equidistant cuts with the hand router in a repeatable manner. The distance between the cuts (grove) must be eqaul otherwise everything will fall off.

The jig is made of polywood and has a fix and a mobile part. The bottom limiter is fixed while the top limiter is mobile so you can slide up or down to secure the timber before start cutting.

router jig
lattice jig
2015-08-21 20.10.46
lattice jig with router
How to use the jig
The first step is to introduce the timber (~1.8-20 mm thick) into the jig from left to rigth, than adjust the upper limiter and tighten the screws. Once the timber is secured, use your hand router and make the first perpendicular grove. The grove depth has to be set to the half thickness of the timber. For the second grove you have to loose the screws and move the timber from left to right until first grove overlaps with the grove on the jig (see the red line). You can use a small piece of wood (must fit the grove) and put it in the jig grove, this way you can ensure that the distance between the groves will be equal.  My jig is built to have an 8 cm distance between the groves which will result in a 8x8cm square after assemblying the parts.
Repease this steps over and over again until you run through the entire timber. Once you are done you should get something like this:
 IMG_0013
When you’ve completed all the timbers you have to cut some slices on the circular saw. Very important that the thickness of each slice has to be eqal with the size of the grove, otherwise your joint won’t fitt. I recommend to have a couple of test custs before cutting the proper timber to ensure that you are cutting the right size.
Assembling the lattice fence
This part is quite easy, you have to take all the pieces, a wood hammer and join the pieces together. In order to have a 45 degree lattice you have to twist a bit structure and then cut it properly.
lattice fence
Lattice fence with interleaving structures

Once the assmebling is finished you can either use some glue or samll nails to fix structure. My jonts were already thight so I’ve used some small nails to fix the structure.

Painting

Well, I’m not proud of this part, I still have a lot to learn about painting. If I would do next time I definitely do it different.

The mistake I did is that I’ve painted the structure after it was assembled. This way the joints will get more finishing paing and will be darker.

In order to avoid this I think you have to paint all the pieces first, let them dry and to assemble all togheter at the end.

Here is the final product. Except the painting part I’m quite happy with the result.

lattice fencelattice fence