Roll wire fencing

[tlich63]

Does anyone have ideas or suggestions on how to pull roll wire fence tight? I do not have a tractor but I do have a truck.
Is there a way to pull barbed wire tight?

[Ed Norman]

On roll fencing, I have cut the wire off a few feet past the corner then rolled it around a 2x4. Then I wrapped a chain around the top and bottom of the 2x4 and hooked it onto the trailer hitch and pulled forward in granny low. It pulled the fence real tight. You could do the same with barb wire, I suppose.

[ace admirer]

ok so its barbed wire right not woven? might i ask what gauge wire or a brand name. anyway. if you have a fairly straight and clean fence line. i would secure one end and try to stretch as long a length as possible. fence suppliers sell a cam action "grabber" that will tighten to a barb and allow you to use a come-along or small electric winch. carefull a tensioned barbed wire is something else if it comes out of the tightner or else the wire breaks. as an alternative, a loop can be twisted in to one end and the hook of a come-along put in the loop. i usually add a spring for high tensile fences into my pulling rig. this give me a little flex and give.

here in the rolling foothills, we always used a wire stretcher which consist of a long oak stick with a grabber and used as a lever against each fence post in turn....don't use that anymore..

someone makes a little reverse jack thing that is great to pull the ends of a broken fence wire together to apply a crimp splice. got mine from tractor supply about ten years ago for under $30.

[Spinner]

Do you mean the rolls of fence that have the crimps at the top? We put a metal fence post thru them, hook a chain on each end of the post, and wrap the center of the chain to the trailer hitch. It's not perfect, but it works good enough to keep the fence standing tight. For barb wire we have a special tool made for it. When we couldn't find the tool one time we used a "come-a-long" to winch it up as tight as possible.

[tooltime]

For roll wire, I bolted a couple metal pulling loops to a full dimension 2" by 6" and have some pre-drilled holes that I put use to hold the wire roll. I use the fence stretcher to pull this tight and then staple the netting to the corner post.

My homemade job looks a bit like this stretcher:

Roll wire stretcher

If you want to get real fancy, you can buy a 3-pt. mounted roller that will spool out roll wire/netting and also has metal pegs to hold roll wire for stretching.

3-pt. wire spool and stretcher

For barb wire, get yourself a wire stretcher/Goldenrod like this:
Barb wire stretcher

[fordy]

....................My method , which I finally perfected , was I would wrap each individual wire around a piece of 1" , thick wall pipe about 5 feet long . Then I built a "Hand" , also out of 1" heavy wall pipe . Now , this hand had 5 curved steel rods\fingers shaped like a semi closed hand that would wrap around the pipe with the wire , then I would affix a small chain around this pipe on top and bottom and stretch wire with a comealong . I can't count the number of rolls of wire that I successfully pulled with this setup as I was doing IT for a living . On long pulls I could stretch (2) , 330 foot rolls of field fence at once . And , what you will discover is that the "stretching" is actually a two step process , First , you have to exert enough pull to make the wire Partially standup , this is probably using 60% of the total force necessary , Then , I'd lean the wire against the T posts so It would slide along the ground . Now it's time to really put the Moxy on the comealong and make it as tight as possible cause you just get one chance so make it tight . This is also where you will finDOUT how strong your Hbrace(s) are as they will lean over if not adequately anchored into mother earth . Lots of work , fordy...

[Beeman]

Do not drive the vehicle to pull fencing tight, use a comealong or fence stretcher hooked to a stationary vehicle. You do not have enough control with the pulling with a vehicle and you do have much more power than you need. The combination can make bad things happen.