One way of catering for blue tits etc. is to spread or smear some soft suet under arris rails on fences and into knotholes and on the branches of strong bushes or trees.
They are then turned over the arris rail and sealed to the top of the covering.
More modest houses had a picket fence with posts, arris rails and vertical pickets.
Our arris rails come pre-shaped to suit the mortises and are 3 meters long.
Nail arris brackets to the arris rails and to the post.
Finally, an arris rail was fixed to the back of the roof on the downside of the slope to stop the organic matter flowing into the gutter.
Our specially designed posts have ` V’ notches in the face of the posts to take the triangular arris rails and are also rebated in the top to take a planed & shaped capping to give it a very smart finish.
We also mortice the posts for the scarfed arris rails, a method far superior to the normal closeboard style of rail fixing.
I was able to evaluate the loss when using the mains earth, a single 1.6 metre length of 25 mm copper pipe, and an 80 metre insulated counterpoise stapled along the bottom arris rail of my garden fence.
We decided to replace with close-boarded (feather-edge boards) verticals, on three arris rails between the 4’ x 4’ posts.
Our palisade fencing is usually constructed with the framework of traditional close board fencing, but instead of cladding the arris rails with featheredge boards, 22 mm x 75 mm pales are used and spaced 75 mm apart.
It is erected using morticed posts and tapered arris rails, then clad with feather edged boards.
Originally the allotments had low arris rail fences painted white.
When the concrete has set the close board panels can be secured to the arris rails with nails or screws.
Each end of the arris rail is shaped or tenoned on site to fit into a mortice ready made in the post.