problems stretching fence

[wroughtn_harv]

Hmmmmmm, we, my wife and me, just stretched about eleven hundred feet of eight feet high field fence. What made it interesting was the posts were set on fourteen feet centers and there was only one set of pulling braces so it had to be done in two pulls.

It's banjo tight top to bottom.

I also stretch a lot of V Mesh. Fighty eight inch V Mesh has thirteen horizontal strands tied together with a loosely woven vertical pattern. Think pulling thirteen barbless barbwires at the same time and keeping them all taught. Changes in grade are nothing but a thing.

My secret is to pull the puppy twice as tight as you feel comfortable doing. Then I use a simple tool anyone can make if they have access to a welder. I take a piece of half inch round rod and bend it into a one eighty around another piece of half inch bar stock. I weld that to a rod to it looks something like a two pronged tuning fork. I weld that to a cross piece for a handle.

On the eight feet my wife did all the tensioning, easy. I've had grade changes doing V Mesh where after it was pulled the bottom or top would look like a Mexican wedding dress because of the slack. A little quick work with the tensioning tool and all is well.

I've got pictures somewhere if anyone's interested.

 

[turnkey4099]

Finally got 'em organized.

The tool:

This needs to be modified a bit. The angle irons need to be shortened and made of lighter guage - as it is it is very nose heavy.

Also it needs some sort of a 'stop' so you can just jam it against the wire and squeeze vice having to watch what your're doing.

A section of hog wire with the 'v's.

That was old hog wire when I put it up and has been up for around 20 years. I just used the tool on it this morning for a demo of how it looks.

A section of my back yard fence tensioned with the tool after errecting. I don't like the look of chain link so I tried that light guage mesh.

As there were several elevation changes, even on short sections, I needed a lot of the 'v's to take all the slack out of the wires between the top and bottom ones.

The place this type of tool shines is on old, slack fence. Just walk along putting those 'v's in and they tighten right up.

Harry K

 

[turnkey4099]

Hmmmmmm, we, my wife and me, just stretched about eleven hundred feet of eight feet high field fence. What made it interesting was the posts were set on fourteen feet centers and there was only one set of pulling braces so it had to be done in two pulls.

It's banjo tight top to bottom.

I also stretch a lot of V Mesh. Fighty eight inch V Mesh has thirteen horizontal strands tied together with a loosely woven vertical pattern. Think pulling thirteen barbless barbwires at the same time and keeping them all taught. Changes in grade are nothing but a thing.

My secret is to pull the puppy twice as tight as you feel comfortable doing. Then I use a simple tool anyone can make if they have access to a welder. I take a piece of half inch round rod and bend it into a one eighty around another piece of half inch bar stock. I weld that to a rod to it looks something like a two pronged tuning fork. I weld that to a cross piece for a handle.

On the eight feet my wife did all the tensioning, easy. I've had grade changes doing V Mesh where after it was pulled the bottom or top would look like a Mexican wedding dress because of the slack. A little quick work with the tensioning tool and all is well.

I've got pictures somewhere if anyone's interested.

Yes, I would like to see it.

Harry K

 

[pking]

One thing that also helps after you have the angle iron, 2x4's, what ever you use as the clamp on the fence, is to use two come-alongs. Attach one toward the top and toward the bottom. This makes it much easier to get the top and bottom strands tight at the same time.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

I can tell by the resized pictures in the album that I've posted this before here on TBN. One of the problems we have is new people come on and the same conversations happen over and over again. Part of that is because some don't understand and use the search functions. And part of it is because new participants bring new information/questions that aren't covered in the old conversation.

I do a lot of woven wire fencing. I started off tightening the fabric due to irregularities in the manufacturing process or grade changes by using my fence pliers to crimp the loose wire. The downside of that is the wire can be nicked which leaves an avenue for rust later on because most of the woven wires aren't galvanized but galvanealed, a much lighter and weaker process.

To eliminate the potential for damaging the wire I took an older pair of fence pliers and modified them with quarter inch steel rods doing what the vice grips pking has created does.

The problem with these was that it took a lot of effort and some of my help aren't into the effort as much as I am.

That's when I came up with these.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Here's what the fence sections looked like after what we in the trade call "dressing". This is before tying in which further dresses it out and makes it looks like a professional installation.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

When you do as much fence stretching as I do you learn the old two by fours clamped together sucks big time real quick. Nuts get lost, even when you weld little arms on them so you don't have to use wrenches. Bolts gall up, even when you use the best bolts and lubricate them often. They just don't hold up to repeated and often use.

Over time I developed these. Their biggest drawback is they have to pull past the terminating post. I've found that not a problem when I plan my stretching schedule.

 

[turnkey4099]

When you do as much fence stretching as I do you learn the old two by fours clamped together sucks big time real quick. Nuts get lost, even when you weld little arms on them so you don't have to use wrenches. Bolts gall up, even when you use the best bolts and lubricate them often. They just don't hold up to repeated and often use.

Over time I developed these. Their biggest drawback is they have to pull past the terminating post. I've found that not a problem when I plan my stretching schedule.

Thanks. Nice pics and beautiful fencing.

Harry K

 

[Aquaman]

I have a small fencing project coming up and learned alot from this thread. Thanks for all the great info guys!!!

 

[dmccarty]

I put up a temp fence around the garden to keep out the deer. 48 inch mesh fence and topped with HT wire to get a 6 foot tall fence. The deer did not get into the garden. The mesh fence is barely hanging on the posts. I just twisted odd size HT wire to keep the fence up.

This was the first time I had messed with HT or the mesh fence and I was wondering how to straighten the mesh fence. Now I know.

When I worked on a farm and we put up barbed wire we had a tool that crimped the wire like Harv's and Turnkey's tools. BUT it was two pieces of round metal that had been formed into a square maybe 8-12 inches. The squares where attached to each other in the middle so they scissored. On end was the "handle" and the other end was placed on the barbed wire. You end on the wire would produce a bunch of crimps to tighten up the wire.

Later,
Dan