Building a split rail fence from your own property is a perfectly reasonable way to spend several weekends questioning your life choices. It combines all the charm of manual labor with the thrill of welding a chainsaw hoping your logs cut cleanly and your fence ends up relatively straight. There’s no instruction manual, just you, some trees that didn't ask for this, and an increasing number of tools scattered across the yard. Still, by the end, you'll have a rugged, functional fence and the quiet satisfaction of knowing you built that entirely by hand.
Best wood for a split rail fence
Step 1: Harvesting the posts and rails
Step 2: Preparing and drying the posts and rails
Step 4: Laying out your boundaries
Step 6: Cutting your mortises and tenons
Split rail fence construction project look back
Tools used to construct a split rail fence
Split rail fence construction project gallery
A split rail fence makes sense when you’ve got the trees and a desire to build something lasting instead of just bucking fire wood. Clearing the wildly overgrown back section of my property felt less like yard work and more like reclaiming lost territory from a small, well organized animal kingdom, with enough Eastern White Pine trees to build a fence. And rather than turning your timber into one-time-use firewood, you're creating a functional, good-looking fence that adds value to your property. It's a way to put your wood to work—something permanent, practical, and a little more satisfying than watching it go up in smoke. Plus, there's pride in building with your own hands and materials, not just stacking bundles for someone else's campfire.
Disclaimer: Yes, traditionalists will tell you split rail fences must be made from locust, cedar, or some mythical rot-proof tree only found on sacred lumber grounds. But I used white pine—because it's what I had, it's free, and frankly, I’m not building a fence to outlive a medieval castle. Will it last 100 years? Nope. Will it look great and keep things in (or out) for a long while? Absolutely.
The best wood for a split rail fence is generally black locust, and here’s why: it’s incredibly rot-resistant, dense, and durable—almost annoyingly so when you’re trying to split it, but unbeatable for long-term outdoor use. Black locust can last 30–50 years in the ground without treatment, making it ideal for fence posts and rails that battle the elements year-round.
Other great options include cedar (especially eastern red cedar), which also resists rot and insects naturally, and chestnut, though that’s harder to come by these days. These woods outlast softer species like pine, which are easier to work with but decay faster unless treated or well-maintained.
If you're not aiming for a "built-to-last-a-century" fence, and you have easy access to something like white pine, it can still be a solid choice—with a little extra care.
Felling, limbing, and cutting trees into what will become your posts and rails is the hands-on core of building a split rail fence—and where your idea meets the chainsaw.
Start with finding the right trees to fell: look for those straight, healthy white pine trees, ideally with minimal taper and few low branches. Make sure you’re working in a clear area and that you’ve planned your escape route. A clean face cut and a well-placed back cut will help the tree fall where you want, or at least not back onto your bar.
Once the tree is down, strip off all branches flush to the trunk for smooth posts and rails. In this case, any section of trunk averaging 10” diameter at 8’ would be cut for posts and any trunk larger in diameter at 12’ would be cut for rails--later to be split.
A layout tape measure, hookaroon, and some patience go a long way.
Once your trunks are bucked into sections, the real fun begins—moving them. Even modest-sized pine logs have a special ability to feel twice as heavy as you expected, especially when they’re green and full of sap. Rolling, dragging, or lifting them to your work area becomes an unintentional strength-training program.
Then comes debarking—which sounds like a quick task, until you’ve done your third log and realize you're becoming very familiar with your hatchet. White pine bark isn’t the worst to remove, but it doesn’t exactly fall off willingly. You’ll want a razor sharp hatchet, a solid log to brace against, and something to keep you from losing your sanity.
The bark removal is tedious, sticky, and oddly satisfying when done right. You’ll quickly discover the right angle and force needed: too light and nothing happens, too hard and you bury the blade into the wood. It’s a slow grind, but crucial—bark holds moisture and pests, both enemies of a long-lasting fence. Bonus: by the end, you’ll have respectable forearms and a deep appreciation for modern lumberyards.
Splitting rails the traditional way—with wedges, a maul, and plenty of determination—has its charm, but using a chainsaw offers a faster, slightly less backbreaking alternative. Instead of working with the grain to encourage a log to split (read: beating it into submission), you're cutting it directly, on your terms. This method trades brawn for fuel and bar oil, and while it's still physical, it's far less medieval.
The basic idea is to lay the log flat and rip it lengthwise into halves and then those halves into halves, and so on depending on diameter. A long bar (28”) and a steady hand help here—so does marking your cut lines with chalk or a snap line to avoid ending up with rails that look like they were split during a blindfolded contest. You’re aiming for function, not perfection, but rails that vaguely resemble straight lines are easier to install.
It’s messier than traditional splitting—expect a blizzard of sawdust and a pine-scented beard—but it works well for softer woods like white pine, which don’t always split cleanly with wedges. Just be ready to sharpen your chain often: cutting lengthwise through green pine is tough on teeth. All told, it’s a faster, more accessible option for those who don’t want to reenact frontier life with every rail.
The first section of fence is going to surround my wife’s garden: a 24’ square. Laying out a 24' square for a section of split rail fence starts with establishing two anchor points—your first and second corners—along the property line. These will form one side of your square. Measure and mark these two points precisely, then stretch a string line tightly between them to represent your first fence line.
Now, to find a perfect 90° corner from that line, you’ll use the good old 3-4-5 right triangle method—basic geometry, but extremely useful for avoiding wobbly, drunk-looking fence lines. From one corner (let’s call it Point A), measure 3 feet along the property line (toward Point B) and mark it. From that same starting point, measure 4 feet in the direction where your second side of the square should go. Swing that tape or string like an arc. Now measure between those two marks—if it’s exactly 5 feet, congratulations, you’ve got a right angle.
Now scale it up to your actual layout: for a 24' square, you can use 6-8-10 (or even 9-12-15) triangles to get better accuracy with longer lines. Once your right angle is set, measure 24' from both known corner points and where those lines intersect is your third corner. Connect everything, double-check diagonals, and you’ll have a true square—no guessing, no crooked rails.
Setting fence posts with an auger sounds straightforward enough—until you try it in New Hampshire, affectionately known as the Granite State. That nickname isn’t just a tourism slogan; it’s a polite warning from the soil itself. You’ll learn quickly that “dirt” is more of a suggestion here, and your auger bit is about to become very well-acquainted with every rock New England has to offer.
Each post hole is supposed to take about 20 minutes. That’s true, if you count the time spent actually drilling—not the parts where you stop to pry out a head-sized rock, or debate whether you just struck an ancient glacial deposit or the corner of your septic tank. It’s a full-body workout: legs braced, arms locked, core tight, and one hand on your will to live.
You’ll grunt. You’ll sweat. You’ll question why you didn’t just build a nice little patio instead. But once that post is sunk four feet deep, standing proud in its rocky tomb, you’ll feel like you’ve earned every splinter of that split rail fence. And hey—only 10 more to go.
Cutting three mortises into every post might sound like a nice, meditative woodworking task—until you realize you're doing it repeatedly, on dozens of rough, round-ish posts, each just irregular enough to make every cut feel like a fresh experiment. Welcome to the wonderfully tedious world of traditional joinery.
Each mortise needs to be just right: not too loose (or your rails wiggle), not too tight (or you'll be pounding them in with a level of force that voids your insurance). You’ll quickly find that eyeballing it doesn’t cut it—unless your goal is abstract sculpture. Most folks end up using a chainsaw, chisel, or even a drill and mallet combo to carve them out. It’s a dusty, wrist-numbing process, but it works.
Now for the rails: cutting a tenon on each end of every rail (that’s two per rail, almost 50) by hand is madness. Enter the jig. It may take an afternoon and a few trial runs to build, but once it’s dialed in, it’s a game changer. Suddenly, every tenon is consistent—your joints line up, your rails fit snugly, and your sanity is slightly more intact.
It’s still a process, but it’s the kind of process that feels good—like building a puzzle where you also chopped down the trees.
What started as a noble mission to build a rustic split rail fence quickly turned into a full-body, full-season endurance event starring you, a chainsaw, and every rock in New Hampshire. First came felling white pine trees, which seemed like a great idea until you realized each one was basically a 700-pound dumbbell in disguise. Then came the bark removal, which doubled as an arm workout and a test of your commitment to the cause.
You learned geometry in the yard, built jigs like a colonial carpenter, and discovered that setting posts with an auger in granite is like digging holes with a corkscrew in a parking lot. Mortises were hand-carved with patience, tenons cut with a homemade jig you’re now irrationally proud of, and somewhere along the way you started naming your rails out of sheer loneliness.
But in the end? You didn’t sell firewood to campers—you built something permanent. Something strong. Something just crooked enough to prove it was made by hand. Bravo.
To build a split rail fence, you'll need a chainsaw (for felling trees and cutting rails), a log roller or cant hook (to move logs without herniating anything important), a tape measure and string line (for layout), an auger or post hole digger (plus a sense of humor in rocky soil), a hatchet or drawknife (for bark removal), chisels or a drill (for mortises), and a custom jig (to cut tenons consistently). Toss in safety gear, a wheelbarrow, and probably a cooler of drinks—you’ll earn them.