Best Tools for Fencing

9-gauge Black Fence Wire

There’s a good reason you’ll find twisted strands of metal fence wire at work on farms everywhere. It’s the most useful, least expensive way to mend and marry all kinds of items. Perhaps the most useful fence wire of all is the oldest — 9-gauge, black annealed wire. It’s surprisingly soft given its one-eighth-inch diameter, and it’s virtually impossible to break, no matter how tightly you twist it.

The closest competition is 12.5-gauge galvanized wire. It’s cleaner to work with than the black stuff, but it doesn’t have the same strength. You can simply twist with much more tension using 9-gauge wire. Try the same thing with 12.5-gauge wire and it’s likely to break.

On wire fences, you can minimize the work involved in setting wooden posts by substituting metal T-posts between corners. In the time it takes to set one wooden post, you can put 20 T-posts in the ground using a post pounder. In many locations, you can run a quarter-mile or more of barbed wire or woven wire fence with only T-posts for support and wooden posts at the corners and along the fence where more tension is needed. A sledgehammer might seem like a good tool for installing T-posts, but sledgehammers are heavy and sometimes dangerous.

You can buy ready-made T-post pounders, or you can make your own. I made one using a piece of 2-inch-diameter, 48-inch-long steel pipe with a solid section of steel rod welded into the top; the rod should be at least 8 inches long to create enough weight and strength to drive in the post. Some factory-made models have handles, but a large-diameter pipe is easy enough to grip. To use one, slip the completed pounder over the top of your T-post, set the post upright and then lift the pounder up and bring it down hard over the top.

A few fence builders have devised ingenious methods for mounting a post pounder on the bucket of their front-end loaders. This makes it possible to push the posts into the ground with the bucket in a few seconds, but it’s considered unsafe by tractor manufacturers.

T-posts are easy to install, but they’re difficult to pull out later—soil grips the rusty surface with surprising strength. A post puller is the best tool for removing a T-post. This is a lever-actuated tool that grips the T-post and pulls it out as you lean back on the handle.

WIRE-HANDLING TOOLS 

If you’re installing a wire fence, then you need tools to unroll, snip and tighten the stuff. Woven wire simply unrolls along the ground during installation, and you can easily slide an old broom handle through a roll of barbed wire so it unspools while you walk or drive the fence line. But high-tensile wire is a different matter. The coils are larger in diameter, and the wire itself is rather springy and tangles easily. That’s why fence manufacturers invented the “spin jenny,” a low-friction revolving spool that accepts standard wire coils, allowing you to unroll wire as needed when building a fence. The jenny sits on the ground while you walk away with the wire end in your hand. It ensures kink-free, twist-free wire that’s easy to handle, which can eliminate frustration and save time.

Fence pliers help you cut, bend and pull wire. Fences that include staples (mostly woven and barbed wire) are best tackled with a set of full-feature pliers with cutting notches or edges, a spike for pulling up staples and a hammer for driving them. If you’re dealing with a high-tensile fence or a wooden rail, then a simpler design will do fine. In this case, look for pliers that have cutting capabilities (those with cutting notches are easier to use and last longer than those with cutting edges), and large, serrated jaws that can grip the wire.