Pros: Good for helping pick the right project and make plans for starting it
Cons: I think you'll need more detail than you find here....some major lessons are missing.
The Bottom Line: Get this book for help in choosing the right fence project, but look elsewhere for the plans for actually building it...there is too much missing here.
snpmurray's Full Review: George A. Martin - Fences, Gates, and Bridges And ...
New house, new yards, animals, gardens and boundaries. I can see I am going to need a lot of different fences. In the interests of keeping myself interested I decided the best thing to do was use a variety of fences in different styles. With this in mind I obtained a copy of the first popular fence book the library had to offer to get ideas from. Here I found myself with Freudenberger's “Building Fences and Gates.”
The author does not offer us any data regarding his qualifications to write a book of this kind. This needn’t necessarily leave us ignorant these days, so I Googled him. He has written book and articles galore on the subject of outdoor work, but I couldn’t find a jot describing his professional background. In this case then, the proof of the pudding will have to be in the eating.
Let me begin by telling you, this book is big on pretty pictures but small on hard data for the person wanting to start building. You would be hard pressed to produce a fence from the contents of this book. What this book will do is give you the understanding you need to decide which is the right fence for the project you have in mind, and what work you might expect to undertake to build it.
I think this book is best broken down into two sections of descriptions telling you what you get and what you don’t.
Preparation is everything....what you DO get in this book
This book is one which you should read on the deck over a lemonade rather than in the shop with your belt on. The author’s primary focus seems to be to give the reader a broad overview of the fencing world. Near the beginning of the book there are chapters on the history of fencing, both social and mechanical, and some discussion of the handing down of traditions in fence making. While this is all very nice, I didn’t find it particularly helpful in any practical sense. As you will see over the course of my review, this is a good book, but not one that is useful in too much of a practical sense.
If you are interested in seeing lots of pictures of different designs of fences, this is the right book for you. Presenting more like a coffee table book than a workbench book, we are shown many large beautiful pictures of fences and arbors of all kinds. There is the occasional picture of a tool or a joint, but these do not feature significantly in the text. Pictures of fences are of all kinds, in all settings, though as a resident of Arizona I note as is typical for most D.I.Y. books, the pictures are almost all in green and pleasant parts.....no arid environments here. Don’t these people think we landscape southwest of Denver?
This book can help you to come up with an effective plan for your property and will be helpful in deciding what to use where. There is discussion of how to judge prevailing winds and take these into account. We cover how to anticipate the effects of light and shade, how to account for and/or highlight the features already present in the environment etc.
In the spirit of good preparation (and I do not argue that good preparation is more than half the work) there is good coverage of costing out materials, estimating how much wood or staple or fasteners you will need and more. The purpose of each of the many components of a fence is described and it’s purpose explained. You can come away from this book with some fair understanding of what ballpark of quantities you might require for your given project.
Fatal flaws.......what you DON’T get in this book
For heavens sake, please don’t attempt to use this book to actually build a fence project from. Whilst the information it contains is accurate, it is not easily adapted to account for the differences between your own property and the one on which the “model projects” included were made. There is a fairly long list of vitally important components missing from this book for that purpose.
The first big omission from this book came to my attention fairly early on, when I saw that under the section on types of fencing there was no mention of chain-link. Chain-link is tough, safe, relatively non-invasive and maintenance-free. There’s lots of projects for which it is ideal, and the fact that it is completely omitted from this book should be noted by the reader, and chain-link should probably be looked into before you dismiss it on the strength (or lack of same) of this one incomplete volume.
Take as another example of how this book would have you dive into a project only to later realize how little preparation it had truly given you, the section on concrete footings. Concrete is often the best materials for footings in areas with clay or caliche soils. That’s me folks! So according to this book I should go ahead and get myself a boatload of premix concrete, pour it into my holes, and off I go. No mention of curing the concrete, no mention of how to use rebar or other reinforcing materials is given. I dare you to pour four or five ton of concrete without having made adequate preparation and not cry for a month at how much work you had to do to rectify the inevitable errors. This book fails often to alert the reader that there is more detail involved in a sub-step than it illustrates.
The brief section of the book which gives step-by-step illustrated photographs of the fence building process does so on only one design, saying first that the steps illustrated are easily adapted to serve the other designs and materials. This is frankly a pile of dingo’s kidneys. If you plan to build a fence, build it very specifically from a plan for that exact type of fence! This book, whilst pretty will not get you far beyond the drawn plan stage without tears.
I feel personally that this book is fatally flawed. Whatever you want from a book on fences, I suspect you would be better served by choosing one which may leave you with a false and deadly sense of readiness!
There is a good index at the end of the book, and a glossary of basic terms. By all means read this book, but I cant recommend you buy it, it wont be all you need.
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