How To Make A Barbed-Wire Fence: Tips And Tricks
Barbed wire, although somewhat dangerous, is one of the most durable types of fence that can be built to cage animals and separate sections of your fields and yards. There is a wide variety of tips and tricks to protect yourself while you build a barbed-wire fence. The right tips and tricks can turn the complicated task of building a barbed wire fence into something more manageable.
Step 1
Wear leather gloves when handling barbed wire. Although the fixed wire is not dangerous in itself, tensing the barbed wire can cause accidents in case of wire breakage. Although rare, the most likely result in case of cable breakage is that the wire can hurt your hands while you are handling it.
Step 2
Guide your work with a string. Although you can measure your posts with your eye to keep them as straight as possible, you should always use a string for more precise positioning. Tension the string between the posts in the corners at the termination points of each fence section and use that line as a reference when driving your T posts.
Step 3
Stretch the cable with a pulley ratchet. Although tightening the cable by hand is possible, the most effective way to get the wire stretched is with a pulley ratchet. Connect the tool to the cable that is being stretched and then connect the other end of the tool to something fixed, such as a tree, the hitch on the back of a truck or anything you can find. Turn the handle to stretch the wire.
Step 4
Set the wire clips with a couple of fencing pliers. Although normal pliers may be sufficient in case of trouble, fencing pliers have a hook-type tip specially designed to hold the curved part of a cable clamp, allowing you to easily rotate the clamp around the wire once to rotate the clamp in place.