Fences and Gates - How do I bend a top rail back to being straight.

My neighbor bent a top rail on my chain link fence. The bow is towards my yard. He then installed a fence about a foot into his yard. Any one have suggestions as to getting the rail straight again. I hammered a good part of it straight but the rest isn't going anywhere.

If you can't beat it back into shape, you'll probably have to replace the rail. Why did the neighbor bend the rail??

Heat it with a torch. Try map gas first.

Determine the center of the bend on the opposite side of the bend on the pipe. Mark it with a black marker.

Find a tree with a V trunk.. or a spot between two posts that are closely fit together.
Put the rail between the posts, or tree trunks. Flip the rail around so that you can no longer see the marker mark. Pry the rail back a little at a time , always checking for accuracy of the bend.'

If you have any questions feel free to come back. I will try to help any way I can.

Gregs Fence

I didn't think that he wanted to disassemle it.

There are only a few ways I have ever seen a top rail being bent no matter what the diameter of the rail. One of the most common ways of a top rail being bent is a tree limb falling on it. Another popular way would be for a child or a man to climb the fence towards the center between two line posts, And even that would not be on a galvanized fence or with a 1 5/8" top rail. In an instance where a neighbor intentionally went ahead and bent the rail and then put up his own fence I was under the impression that the top rail was already disconnected from the terminal posts for some reason unknown or the fence itself was installed on a curve into the neighbors yard where as he pushed the fence back away from his own yard. In that if he did push it back not only would the top rail be bent but so would the posts neighboring the top rain in that area.
For a perfectly straight top rail the best solution would be to do as Lefty suggested and replace the rail. Or at the very least to cut out the bad section and replace just a portion of that rail. Doing so can be done with using two sleeves that would sleeve over the existing pipe completely . If the top rail is a 1 3/8" diameter pipe you would use two 12 " pieces of 1 5/8" pipe. One on each end. Cutting out whatever length of pipe needed, replacing it with that exact same length piece of new pipe. On each end of the existing top rail you would make a mark on the existing top rail about 6" in from the cut end .Now you would sleeve over one of the 12" pieces of pipe to be flush with the cut end. Put the new length of top rail in place and slide the sleeve over the new pipe to so that the cut is just about at the half mark. You should see the mark you put on existing top rail. At that point you would have enough of a sleeve to support that top rail on the one side. Do the same on the other side and retie the top rail.
When retying the top rail make sure you put wire ties on both sides of both sleeves that later in time the sleeves do not slide away and let the top rail slip off. Otherwise if done correctly this top rail is fixed in a professional manner.

If the top rail was a 1 5/8" top rail which I would not assume because it would be difficult to bend, but if it was I would suggest using a 2" diameter pipe for sleeves. Do not attempt to use a 2 3/8" or otherwise referred to as 2 1/2" pipe as a sleeve because this diameter pipe would cause the top rails to shift away from each other. Not only would that be dangerous in putting together it would likely leave the top rails uneven in height and the bent rail would look just as bad as the new attempted repaired rail.


Good luck...