to chevron or not to chevron (a diy in progress)

I already mentioned walking the novice course after volunteering at OF's recognized event recently. It was mostly a fact-finding mission; call it research or reconnaissance or whatever. The course was mostly pretty soft, with at least half the fences looking pretty doable to me (and I was proven correct when we did, in fact, school those with no issue).

 looks kinda like extremely carnivorous teeth. maybe even horse eating teeth

But some of the others..... Well, they inspired these sharp little intakes of breath. For instance, this bright white chevron. What's difficult to tell from the photograph is that the approach is on enough of an incline that you can see the horizon moving through the cutouts as you come uphill. Spooky, right?

Now I would suck it up and ride Isabel at this thing with everything I'm worth, were we to encounter it on course. BUT. I also did not ask to give it a shot while we were schooling (watch the video closely and you'll see us breezing past it at one point). No thanks!

one man's garbage pile. another's treasure trove of endless diy possibilities!

So, true to form, I decided that maybe we should get a little more mileage over this type of fence. And what better way to do so than by having one at home? It doesn't look that complicated to make, plus we have loads and loads of old 6" boards at the farm from replacing the fencing.

dear board, plz to become chevrons?

I dug around to find a couple likely boards... but damn they were petrified as shit and full of nails that seemed anchored in place by the mortar of age. But then I spotted this old scrap of plywood that looked to be about the right size for making a skinny two-point chevron of reasonable height. Actual measurements proved to be about 7'x17" - good enough, right?

the measuring tape makes this look credibly legit, right? or is it the fancy dotted lines?

Sadly the only cutting tools available at the barn are hand saws and a circular saw that the BM (very reasonably) didn't want me operating. Instead she encouraged me to mark out the lines and said our regular handymen would make the cuts for me. 

first set of lines. looks good, except maybe the thin points wouldn't stand up to a lot of abuse

That plan sounded pretty good to me.... but then I had a really hard time mapping out the lines while the board was in one piece. So I went ahead and used a hand saw to at least get the two pieces that will make up the top and bottom halves of the 'shark's teeth.'

not confusing at all, right?

That made it so much clearer to actually visualize what I wanted - and drawing the lines suddenly got much easier. Except I still screwed it up and made the points too narrow to start. So I started over and drew a bunch more lines.... esp on the bottom half.

if you've had a beer or two, those cuts look straight(ish)

And then given what a mess I'd made of those lines (plus the fact that I had another hour to kill before my lesson), and my need for instant gratification... well, I figured I could make a few more of the cuts with the hand saw. Never mind that just making that first cut had nearly killed me.

my arm is exhausted just looking at this pic

Sawing through old wood is not fun, y'all. This is an example of a project that is MUCH easier with the right tools... Plus my cuts really weren't very straight at all.... But the heart wants what it wants and my heart wants a chevron jump NOW.

and i actually cut along one of the wrong lines on the left side. fml. at least i made it too wide, not too narrow... so theoretically another cut will fix that right up. 

So yea, that's where things stand now. The bottom points of the chevrons are cut out (with probably a little cleaning up, esp that left side, to still be done) and I'll leave the top parts for the guys with the proper tools.

Then it's a question of framing the pieces together and painting it BRIGHT WHITE. The two pieces together measure 4' across, but I can make it wider depending on how I frame them. We will see. Has anyone else done a project like this before? Also, anyone want to take bets on how long it takes before I finish the last few pieces? Lol....