Dead Man Brace for Fencing

all right good day everybody this is matt webb with ut extension washer county i thought today for a video i would kind of demonstrate how to construct a what they call a dead man's brace this is a fence brace that is handy in areas where maybe you're in some rocky ground and you do good just to find one hole to put a post in the ground and you need a corner and so what we're going gonna do here we we already have this eight foot post here in the ground we've already dug a three foot uh hole so we we're getting this centered up along our line here that we got floating a little bit above the ground and in the next series of slides what we're going to do we're actually going to put a brace that's going to go down to the ground roughly at an angle here just some basics before we get to that point though is that a lot of times i like to put a rock or a block on the back side of these corners because as this your fence is going to try to pull your your post into the middle as it is stretching and so you know that's what that fence is going to do it's going to want to pull that post forward and so if you put a block or a rock on the back side of that it's going to help keep this post snug uh to prevent that so we'll go ahead and set this post and then in the next step we'll we'll have our our brace cut and ready to to drill into this post and be able to set this brace all right i will suggest to you that when you are are setting your post a little dirt at a time and a lot of a lot of tamping because look we don't have to reset these corners again so hello let's make sure they're solid let's get in there good so we don't have to do this all again or have to worry about whether our fence is going to be tight so we keep those animals in so we can be so we can reduce the stress in our lives trying to farm but also be good neighbors to everybody around us it's a little a little bit of dirt a lot of teaming all right we got our next part done we got our post set pretty solid we've already got the our brace post here we've cut it the end of it at an angle and uh we got some nice flat rock down here at the end we're gonna set it on that flat rock and then we'll be able to set it up against this post here um i kind of like this to be sitting somewhere between 36 and you know 48 inches most of our top wires on our fences are going to be around that way so as that wire is being pulled to the middle of the fence you know our brace is right up against that top wire close to it and that really helps keep the fence tight and so for our next part here we're going to look at taking a drill bit and we're going to drill right here and i'll be able to illustrate that for you all right for this next part here we have a 3 8 drill bit and we're going to we're going to put a hole through here and hopefully go into the the corner post i like to use these type of nails here they're about the diameter is about 3 8 or a slightly larger so as we set those nails in there it's going to help hold this brace post on this on this corner post very nicely so be sure to drill at an angle all right now that we got our hole drilled we're gonna go ahead and set this brace post where it needs to go um on our next step we're gonna i'm gonna show you how to strain it and make sure it stays good and tight all right we're about ready to be done with this last step on this brace post is to put some sort of a wire down here at the bottom that's going to push this post into this one and it's going to help keep this this brace tight here so i got a strainer that we use for high tensile we're using high tensile wire this is 12 and a half gauge so we're going to use that and then you gotta use a ratchet to help tighten this up and then you may also need your fence pliers one thing that i did do is i put fence staples behind this post and then a couple at the the end of this post to help hold this wire in place so we're going to tighten this up and when you do when you do put one of these strainers on put it opposite of the side where your fence wires is going to be that way if you ever have to come back here and tighten this in the future your fence wire is going to be completely out of your way when you get ready to do that all right we got that tight and good and tight you can also if you wanted to if you wanted to take a wire and and pull those two together so it might be out of your way but there's the last step well there you go there's the steps to how to how to make a dead man's brace like i said before these are very handy if you have places where getting one hole in the ground is quite a chore these also work well if you're subdividing fields so if you have any other questions that we can help you with at the extension office be sure to reach out to ut extension marshall county have a good day

Channel: UT Extension Marshall County

Views: 7,203

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Id: a1KN_B0BaMo

Length: 7min 4sec (424 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 28 2021