Author: corey_lawson
Date: 03-19-05 01:02
We put in 1800' of the green HT woven wire for our pasture last summer, with 8'x6" treated wooden posts for corners and gates, and 8'x4-5" wooden posts every 16'. At least here in the Willamette Valley, OR, we can get the 4-5" posts for about the same price each as an 8' heavy duty T-Post right now. I figured that to be smart with T-posts I would want to put them every 8-10', (the fence guy talked me out of every 25' for the wood posts, as per the catalog...), I think it worked out to be about the same price overall if I pounded in the T-posts vs the fence guy pounding in the wood posts and building the braces. The post pounder worked just fine, even in the dry soil in August.
I put in the woven wire myself (literally). To help make it easier, I made a kind of a vertical lazy suzan (two 1/2"x12"dia plywood rounds) with 4 dolly wheels, a 2" hole in the center of both pieces of wood, a T-bar and a good piece of 2" PVC pipe, to vertically hold the wire roll, and pulled it out from there. It was a little bit dorky after getting about 100-150' out, but I was able to do it. At the time, the dry weed load was pretty good, and I did not relish the thought of kicking the roll of wire out, only to have it roll back up again, either. The HT woven wire is pretty springy, much more so than the non-HT woven wire. Much easier to put the 36" roll on my contraption than a 48" roll!
The HT woven wire is pretty tough to wrap. Get a wire wrapping tool (a 2-4" piece of metal, with a couple of holes drilled in it slightly bigger than 12-1/2 ga., and wrap the wire with that. Also, give yourself at least a foot of "whip" when wrapping the ends around a corner post. It's easy to take the extra away, but not add it back in...
For cutting it, I bought two fencing tools. The first one I bought, was the cheapest one at the feed store. I didn't want to pay $45 for the Crescent one. Well, the first time I tried to cut HT with the cheapo one, I about wrecked the cutter. The Crescent one is hardened enough. Or, a small set of bolt cutters will work as well.
To join the pieces, do clamp both ends together, either with a woven wire clamp and puller, or with 2x4's bolted together to do the same thing. At least for me, using the sleeves and crimper could be a 3-handed job at times. And, of course, the joins I made sucked (but work), and the couple I thought I did good don't look much better, either.
No offense to Premier, but buy what you can locally. Shipping is kind of expensive. *:)
The fence is working, and I think it's going to be working for 50 years.
It's also nice to be able to step over the wire, instead of find a gate...
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