Fence Tightening Tools
- Properly maintained fences help keep livestock from wandering off.barbed wire fence image by pixelcarpenter from Fotolia.com
Fences keep expensive livestock from wandering away and unwanted critters from entering and eating livestock. Fencing also plays an important role in determining who is liable when livestock goes wild on range land. Livestock owners in Colorado are not liable for destruction of property during an accidental trespass if the other land owner did not protect his property with a fence. Land owners therefore protect their property and keep the fences well maintained so that they can turn cattle and horses away. Proper maintenance means keeping fence tools handy. - After two fence posts have been pounded into the ground a smooth wire puller allows you to tighten a single wire span between two posts for guide wires. The puller also repairs broken wires that need to be spliced together. The wire puller is composed of two self clamping jaws and then pulled together by a chain that attaches to both ends. The wire puller then pulls the two ends attached to the chain together like a come-along.
- Stretcher bars and pullers allow the tensioning of wire woven fences. The ends of the fence are pulled together by the pullers allowing the operator to put tension on the fence. A stretcher bar looks like a pole with holes along it so wedges can be slid into the holes to hold the fence wire ends in place by friction force. The puller has about 19 feet of chain and the tool acts like a come along. The 19 feet gives the tool a longer reach than the average come along. A puller applies 2,000 pounds of force.
- Crimping tools are used to splice wire fences together. Crimp tools look like giant pliers. Splices should be able to hold 1,500 pounds of tensile stress. Sleeves are placed over each wire end to be joined and then a crimper is used to splice the wires together. The crimper works by a squeezing action that forces the metal in the sleeve to come together between two teeth.
