I’m almost embarrassed to have to post this, because it really sounds dumb, but does anyone have an idea as to why a jigsaw won’t cut across vertical fence pickets? I have a 6 foot tall cedar fence, made of 1x6 inch weathered rough cedar pickets. I want to cut about 6 inches off the bottom. When I put the blade of a jigsaw in the half-inch gap between any two pickets and try to cut through one of them, the blade just won’t bite into the wood, no matter how much force I apply to it. The lower horizontal wood cross brace of the fence is about a foot above the bottom of the pickets, so that the bottom portion of the pickets are able to move slightly. I don’t know whether the fact that the bottom portion of the pickets can vibrate slightly is keeping the jigsaw blade from being able to get started into the wood. I’ve tried this with two corded jigsaws, and one of them has an orbital function, but neither has variable speed. One is a B&D, and one is from HF. I know that these aren’t top quality jigsaws, but they both work fine when I cut sample pieces of the exact same material held down on a flat surface. The blades that I used are 6 and 8 teeth per inch. The section of fence that I need to trim is about 50 feet long, and I don’t want to do this with a handsaw, and I don’t want to have to wield a heavy circular saw to do it. Any ideas?
Louis