With the smooth wire up we were ready to start putting up the high tensile woven wire. We chose high tensile woven over conventional soft metal fencing because it is stronger, more resistant to damage, and better coated against rust. Unfortunately, Bekaert, the largest supplier of high tensile woven, is an east coast company and the product selection is limited out here. We eventually had to special order our fencing from a local farm store.
First step is rolling out the wire.
Then some finagling to get the wire on the opposite side of the fence posts. It was rolled out on the other side so it wouldn’t hurt my planted veggies.
Next came wrapping the post with the woven wire and tying it off.
The next several steps take a while as you have to cut each square knot and pull off the verticals until you have enough bare line wire to tie back on itself.
Each wire has to be tied into a slip knot down the length of the woven around the wooden post. In the picture below, on the left is the slip knot that terminates the woven line wire. On the right is one of the woven square knots that gives this fencing its strength.
Lee made a homemade stretcher so we wouldn’t have to buy one. This was the first version of that stretcher. We put the fencing in between the boards, bolted it together, and then hooked the two come-alongs to the eyelets on the board on one side and two cables around the post. Then once the fence was nice and tight the tying off process started all over again. After the post was tied off then you could release the come-alongs and unbolt the stretcher. After that we went along and stapled the woven wire on the fence where we wanted it on the posts and wire clipped it on the T-posts.
This whole process was very time consuming and we only managed to get one of the four woven lengths up per day (working in the evenings). But it is done now. HORRAY! The below picture doesn’t show it well but there really is woven fencing all around. The woven wire is hard to see from a distance when looking straight on. The top three wires on the posts ended up being the most visible on the fence.
The fence is done?!! I hope you celebrated!!
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Fellas, I used a come-along with a chain going from top of bolted 2x6s to hook of come-along and then back to bottom of bolted 2x6s. This worked well and I was pulling 700 feet at a time. Also, I pulled to trees (or you could us a stationary object like a tractor) beyond the fence corner or H-brace so my bolted 2x6s and my come-along were ten feet beyond my H-brace set up. When I had my wire pulled, I stapled my top wire to the post, then cut the wire long enough to wrap around post. Then I stapled and cut the bottom wire and wrapped it. I alternated high and low wires til I was through, so my stretch stayed even.
Sounds like you have some experience at this. We’ve done eight pulls since this post was written, so the process goes much quicker for us now as well. I did buy a fence clamp instead of the 2x home-made version. High tensile woven gets pulled to a higher tension level than the mild steel woven wire, and our home-built clamp had real problems with slipping. I still use two come-alongs so I can tension the top and bottom separately. I’ve seen people do the pull, staple, and cut process that you describe. I believe the RedBrand website even has videos of the process. It definitely goes faster, but again, I’m concerned that the high tensile wire would slip through the staples when cut and before it was tied.