Anybody know high tensile fencing?

[SeabeeMan]

I have my garden expansion finished finally with room for fruit trees and the bulk of it is fenced with 4' welded wire fencing to keep rabbits, turkeys, and all but the really motivated bears out. My corner posts are braced up with twisted wire so they are good and strong and I cut them off at 8'. I would like to run 2 strands of electric fence wire, one at 6' and one at 8', but not electrify, it to keep the deer out. I see how the inline strainers and gauge springs work, but I'm curious if I really need to invest in the crimping tool to use the sleeves at the strainer and end connections. Would it suffice to simply run it through and form my loops by twisting the wire back on itself? Or do I just need to quit being cheap and buy the crimper?

[jcren]

Don't be cheap. High tensile is hard carbon steel and will eat you alive trying to twist splice it. There are several brands of splicers, I use the one that looks like 30" bolt cutters to crimp the steel sleeves. Works wonders, especially for splicing existing fence.

[SeabeeMan]

Sounds good, I did some more digging and found the same info on the steel fencing. I was under the impression it was the same stuff I had used as brace wire in my corners, but like you said it is an entirely different animal. Can the same crimpers be used to do braided steel cable or is it a different standard size of ferrule?

[jcren]

Different ferruls, same crimper. We keep several sizes to handle fron 16 gauge singles up to 12 gauge barb wire. Work great on aircraft cable for tree stands, etc.

[jcren]

Side note, this stuff is extremely hard to cut and will ruin a good set of dikes quick. The crimped I have is a boltcutter with the first half or the jaws flattened to crimp, and the back works great to cut.

[SeabeeMan]

That's good to know. The cheapest crimper I can find locally is $70, but there are good compound bolt cutters for just over half that. I saw one where somebody welded the jaws to build them up and then drilled them out to crimp. Did you just flatten the with a grinder, creating an area at the dip that doesn't close completely?

I think I was overthinking this a bit. I had aircraft wire ferrules in my head which are smooth on the inside and I know that there are specs for their crimping. I didn't realize these ferrules have grit on the inside to help grip...in theory, anything that can smash them into the wire without cutting them would work. I like the bolt cutter idea a lot and I will pick one up after work tomorrow when I get wire.

Any suggestions on corners? There are the donut kind that you wire in on the corner but ideally, I'd love to be able to have something that stick up from the top of the corner post to give me the most height. I suppose that is a lot of tension being held by a screw driven into the top that is trying to resist being sheared or pulled out.

[cobroller]

Go to Kencove.com for instructions on hand knots. Probably not very cost effective to buy a crimper for just a few connections. Heavy duty plastic corners work better than porcelain. High tensile needs to be attached to a high strength post, I wouldn't try to extend it above the post.

[oneokie]

This is the business I get my HT fencing supplies from: http://www.twinmountainfence.com/

[owejia]

If you're not electrifiying why not just wrap and tie off on each corner post. You can wrap hi-tensile wire instead of crimping.The 120,000 lb tensile wire you need a pipe with a small hole to shove the end of the wire in and then wrap it like you do barb wire, the 70,000 lb wire you can wrap by hand, you need at least 4 wraps to get the full strength of the wire to hold. I have over 7 miles of this up now, been weed eating underneath it for the last week . Mine is electrified to hold cattle in. Fi-shock makes a double formed insulator that has a metal band to keep them from coming apart if they get broke, the porcelain ones break and let the wire fall to the ground. Some of my fences all 4 wires are hot and some only have two hot wire depending on if different bulls will be on each side. The tensioners need to be tightened in summer and loosened in winter because the wire contracts and expands with the temperature.

[Petrol & Powder]

Don't be cheap. High tensile is hard carbon steel and will eat you alive trying to twist splice it. There are several brands of splicers, I use the one that looks like 30" bolt cutters to crimp the steel sleeves. Works wonders, especially for splicing existing fence.
Ditto, and as a side benefit the wire/sleeves/tool/tensioner has lots of other applications. It's WAY easier than twisting, etc. Once you use that stuff you'll never go back to the old methods. The sleeves are cheap and the crimping/cutting tool is a one time cost.

[MtGun44]

Would seem far easier to add the fence charger.

[SeabeeMan]

I picked up all the stuff to do this the right way. Crimpers, ferrules, 1/4 mile of 14ga wire, tube insulators for the loops, and porcelain corner insulators. The plan is to not electrify it but I'm going to build it to have that option in the future.