Building a Good Fence - Stringing the Fence

Third Step - STRINGING THE FENCE

Once your posts are in the ground, you are ready to run the fencing. You will need to have some way to roll out the fencing. We have created a fence roller by welding a square post onto a metal plate and mounting it to a trailer hitch. We place the roll over the post and then pull fencing from there.

Starting at the corner furthest from the gate, wrap the fencing around the wooden post and twist the wires back onto itself, thus creating a loop.  We find this much more successful as an anchor point than attaching the end of the fencing with horseshoe nails.  It also avoids the "pokey" end of the fence hanging off the wooden post.

Unwind the fencing so that it wraps around the pen somewhat tight.  You will tighten it up later with a come-along or other fencing tool, but you don't want too much slack in it to start with.  Make sure that your fencing is on the correct side of the t-posts.  It should lie against the "button" side of the post.  If you chose to keep animals in versus out, you may have to weave your fencing to the inside for t-posts and then back around the outside of your wooden corner posts.  It won't bother your fenceline at all to have this weaving, but it is very important to have the fencing on the correct side of the post.  I suppose you could attach the fencing to the inside of your corner posts, but this is not nearly as strong as if you have the tension held on the fence around the outside of the wooden post.

When you reach the end of the first side, you will want to stretch the fencing and attach it before moving on.  It is possible to stretch around a corner, but as I mentioned in the first posting, J is very anal about his fences, and it just wouldn't be tight enough if we didn't stretch each side separately.

For stretching, you can use a variety of tools.  We have been known to slide a steel pipe through the fencing, attach the pipe to our ditch witch and then pull.  We have also used a traditional fence puller with hooks down a pipe attached to a come-along.  However you decide to stretch your fence, make sure that you stretch it as evenly as possible from top to bottom.  Also, note that if you are using "field fence" where the squares go from big to small - you want the small squares on the bottom and the big squares on the top.

Once your fence is as tight as you feel safe handling, you need to attach it to the gate post.  Since the gate post will be pulled on, it is important to have a triangular brace (t-post) or an H corner (wooden posts) to support the strain.  We find that sliding the up/down wire over as far as possible, and then cutting the cross wires one at a time works best.  We cut a wire and wrap it around the post, securing it to itself.  We then cut another wire, repeating the process until we only have the top and bottom wires left.  By this time, the tension in the fence-pulling device is usually relieved.

This shows the wire attaching the fence to the post.  It also shows
a second wire (wrapping the t-post) because this was a spot
where we built a perpendicular line as well.

After the fence is attached at both ends, you need to attach it to each t-post.  You can buy wire attachment pieces, but we have found a great way to make them using fencing wire.  Cut a length of wire about 8 inches long.  Using channel locks, bend a hook in one end of the wire.  Hook this end on a cross wire of the fence.  Wrapping the wire around the t-post and back to the fence, loop the wire around the cross wire of the fence several times.  You should be able to do this mostly by hand.  Once you have the wire hooked and looped, take your fencing pliers and crimp the hook so it won't fall off.  Then clamp onto the loops on the other side and begin twisting them to tighten the loops on the cross wire.  This will slowly tighten the attaching wire behind the t-post and will leave a beautiful line of tight loops around one side.  Cut off any excess tail of wire.  Do this at least three times on each t-post.

to be continued...