Fence post bracing

[farmerjan]

GOD BLESS YOUR POOR CAR!!!!!!

 

[Baymule]

Haha @Bruce I like your style. I had a 2003 Ford Focus wagon that I could stack 750 pounds of horse feed in, plus strap 4 bales of hay on top. The guys at the feed store always laughed when I showed up in my Focus "truck"

 

[farmerjan]

It is actual length of the wire. When you stretch it , you are not going to gain a significant amount more length. Can't say exactly but maybe a foot or two..enough to wrap around the posts. Here they attach both ends to the brace posts and then actually pull in the middle and reattach the wire. I couldn't get the reason until they showed me that this way the pressure is equal on each brace section and it would not pull either one out of balance and the fence actually stays tighter. Still seems a little nutty to me but I do see the reasoning. We usually put in some of the t-posts after the wire is stretched so that we can get them against it. Using a t-post driver, it gets them close and then you aren't trying to work around them while stretching. If it is all wood posts then they are driven in first using a string to keep them straight. Gotta have a good eye to keep them both in a straight line and straight upright.

 

[greybeard]

@greybeard
Regarding: "When we stretch wire, we do exactly that--we are pulling it and making it longer than it is when it came off the roll--hence the 'stretching' term."

When I buy a 330' roll of fencing is that the length on the roll or the length AFTER stretching it? I got out my long tape to make sticking the t-posts in every 10' easier rather than having to measure, pound, measure, pound... . Never had a need to use anywhere near the entire tape before. I noticed it ran out at 330' which just happens (without planning on my part) to be the exact length of the west side of my project. I'm guessing the fact that it is the same as a roll of fence is not a coincidence.

Good question. I previously stated " and it all/each stretches a set amt per foot for any given type of wire.
That should have been " and it all/each stretches a set amt per 100 foot for any given type of wire.

I don't do a lot of woven or knotted wire anymore, tho I did run about 2500' in 2 pulls of what we called 4' tall hog wire back in the late 60s early 70s. Pulled the slack out of it with a tractor first, then tied the fence stretcher on. We got about 2, maybe 3 feet of stretch out of each 1250' sections. Wire composition was different back in those days--very little zinc in it and it had a LOT of give to it.
Modern Hi Tensile wire has very little give to it.

Jan--I've strung and stretched hundreds of miles of slick and barbed wire. Never used string once--seemed a waste considering I knew at some point I was going to have to stretch wire anyway. That stretched wire told me exactly where the posts needed to go. We did the hog wire the same way and put the posts in afterwards.

 

[farmerjan]

GB, different places different ways; every fencing demonstration and all that I have helped with we put the wood posts in first; post driver, not dug and tamped, and then stretched the wire. My son has a good eye for it, I don't. We also don't have very many straight stretches here for very long a length, too many hills, dips, rock ledge to go around or over or something. I am by no means a fence builder...I am the go-fer and staple hammerer...

 

[greybeard]

Middle of this picture, is a 5 strand fence that crosses 3 waterways, and they aren't as clean or flat as this pic indicates. 2 creeks angle off to top left, another almost straight up. There's another fence on the extreme right going top to bottom that crosses the tail end of the pond going off straight to the right.

Here's what they look like close up.

That's the only places I used a string...to tie to the end of the wire, weight the other end of the string and trow the weight across the creek and then cross over and pull the wire to me till I got to the next creek. This is north part of a 2200' long fence that divides a 40 ac tract from another 40 ac tract withing the family. There's another 2200' long fence on the south side separating another 40 ac tract.

Except for the exterior/perimeter fence on the family property of 124 ac that my brother & I built in '65-66, I built all the subdivison fences since 2008 and did them by myself. (My kids are all grown and gone)

When I started in 2007, this place was still covered in forest. The first thing I did was throw together a fencing trailer to hold a spool of barb wire instead of having to try carrying a spool along. I still use it today, but now that I've got it cleared, I can just pull the trailer along and let the wire unspool.

 

[farmerjan]

NEAT way to unroll the wire off the trailer, and carry supplies. Mostly where we use barbed wire now, is in the wooded parts of rented pastures, and there's alot of trees, brush, "garbage" scrub trees and shrubs & stuff. It's all walk and carry with most places not even clear enough to ride a 4 wheeler. But it is interesting that even as a kid when we used barbed wire in CT for my horse pasture (horrors to some people) we put what posts we needed in first. That's how I learned and here in VA we went to a day long seminar and some professionals that run miles and miles of fence all put in the posts first. I think some of that is because the woven wire (field fence) is put on the "inside" of the pastures and naturally you can't drive posts on the other side of the fence once it is up. The barbed wire fences that I grew up, with and that are fine for the horses and cattle, won't begin to hold the dall sheep and won't deter any predators; so we don't use it anywhere we might be able to put the sheep. Most landlords want woven wire if a fence gets replaced.
The pictures surprised me a bit as I didn't realize that there was as much green and trees there, and the land isn't as flat as I thought. Maybe that's more of the western part of the state?

 

[greybeard]

Mine is pretty flat--gently slopes to the far right in the aerial picture, which is a small river. I cleared most of it. When I started, it looked like this: (black sq is where my house is now)


Surrounded by 116,000 ac of US national forest.

 

[Baymule]

People think that Texas is flat desert. Some of it is......Most of it isn't. The southern most of the state is semi-tropical. West Texas is dry with scrubby trees, but it does have the Davis mountains. The Gulf Coast region is humid, has hot summers and warmer winters than most of the state. Southeast and northeast Texas are both carpeted with lush forest, grassy fields, cattle and agriculture. The pan handle is heavy agricultural lands, mostly irrigated. Central Texas is known as the Hill Country with beautiful views, it is in high demand. So, yes, Texas has it's emerald green jewels.

 

[Latestarter]

Not quite as "rolling" as western VA mind you, but nowhere near flat. You'd probably be pleasantly surprised