Today we're going to talk about building
an H brace for your high tensile fence. H-braces or bracing in general is dire to having a successful fence to keep
your animals in and your predators out. So we'll start up out auger and get our hole dug. This is for the end post, the very end, not the brace post Cause where you put your brace is dictated by where your other in is. Where your other brace is at the end. You want to keep it level. One drawback about using a one man auger is for our corner post sometimes we need to be a little bit deeper Than what the actual machine can handle What we will have to do is actually dig out a little bit more with post hole diggers. In this case, we are going to want our post set at about 4 feet deep because our post is 8 foot tall. Surprised I didn't hit water. So the next thing you want to do is use your shovel to back fill the hole and pack it down around the base of the post. As you are back filling it is important that you keep your post as level as possible you don't want a real crooked post, it's kind of unsightly and it may make it a little bit weaker as we put more
tension on it. You can't rush perfection that's fur sure! Using your spinning Jenny, you'll run your guide wire From your in post all the way to your brace post on the apposing end. Again, this is going to be a guide for you to set your brace post When you run your guide wire You want to tie off to your apposing end and then you want to cut your wire off your spinning Jenny and then just pull it tight, even though
it won't be completely tensioned it'll be enough to give you a guide where your
brace post needs to go so once you have your guide wired slightly tension you want
to clip off the wire from the spool and leave enough so you can give it a
nice little wrap. So once you've got your guide wire wrapped this is going to serve
as your guide for your your brace post so this will be the horizontal post
component of the H-brace this is what you're going to use to find your
spacing between your end posts and your brace post so the best thing to do is
just lay it down here and then pick the tip of it here with your shovel and
you can use the guide wire as a reference to where the brace post
is going to be set. just push the guide wire out of the way a bit to set up your auger. and occasionally you want to check and
make sure your hole is still on center with your horizontal post here. It looks good So once you get your brace post in want to check and make sure you have the
proper distance between the two again user the horizontal post here to the
check so then again we'll backfill as we did
with the end post so once you have your brace post set. Now it's time to drill
your holes for your pins to mount your horizontal post Once you mark your spot two thirds up the post you are going to want to go ahead and drill so for your end post here you want to drill only partway into the post roughly halfway. Once we do that we will actually mount this pin into the post. You want to try to keep your drill bit level and you want to try to use the guide wire Make sure to check your level. So once you have your pilot hole drilled out then you'll come to your then you'll come to your horizontal brace post here you're going to want to drill into that
post as well about half of the half of the pin you are using. So hold it up and stay level as you drill your pilot hole And clear it out a bit, it will help get your pin in so now you want to hammer your
pin in part way into your horizontal brace here that's about halfway so
before you mount it you want to also get the hole drilled for your your brace or
your deadman post we use the drill to drill a hole through there. Again you
want to mark your spot where you're going to drill about two-thirds way up
the post and you'll make sure you're level when you drill but for this we
actually go all the way through and I'll explain why we do that in a minute
so before you you pound your pins in you want to drill a small hole into the what
I would call the brace end of the horizontal brace or the deadman
posting end of the horizontal brace that's just to help us get that pin in
when we start hammer so once you have your brace post and your end post
set now it's time to mount your horizontal brace post here so we're
going to, the end with the pin driven we're gonna drive it towards our end
post with the hammer it's good to have somebody to help you keep it lined up. So
now you want to pound in your your pin here that's on the deadman post or on
the brace post and that's going to complete hanging your horizontal post
here. Again you will leave just a little bit out you want to draw the pin all the
way in that this is going to serve as kind of a rest for our brace wire
when we tension it up. Once you've got your brace here assembled go ahead
and just temporarily remove your guide wire because what we're going to do is
actually string up what we call the brace wire to tension these two posts
together because what's happening is when you're pulling this one's pulling
down to this so it's grabbing it and pulling it to this if you did it the
other way you'd be pulling this post in the direction at your fences is pulling.
Alright so, before you run your your brace wire around the bottom you're
going to need something to keep it in place so what I recommend is using at
least a inch and a half fence staple and will staple these to the bottom, kind of at an angle. Don't get them too tight you don't want them too tight because
then it'd be harder to bring your wire through this should just keep that
bottom wire in place and then using your spinning jenny run a figure eight, come down, this is what that bolt was here for so rest it o top of that Get enough slack to pull through. we're gonna go back through the staples I'll make sure you keep your wire up at
the top. Sometimes it's easier to put just a couple staples up there to kind
of keep it in place. Make sure everything's nice and snug and
together. Put your wire strainer on. You want to twist that six seven twist on it. Just so it doesn't slip off when you're putting all that tension on it. There will be a lot of tension on this strainer. It may even be good to take your fencing tool and try to twist it a
couple times with that. Nice finishing touch there so when you know that the tension from
your brace wire is working is you'll see how your your brace post is getting
pulled toward your end post and you see the gap here from where we buried the
post earlier that's it's actually getting pulled in and something else you notice
is you cannot budge, no, you can't spin or rotate this horizontal brace here. So you
know you're getting fairly tight and after you run your wire you'll probably
also have to kind of readjust because it'll once you start putting pressure
your tension going this way you may have to tighten up a little bit more. So once
you get your ratchet strainer tightened and get your brace wire tensioned up
you're ready to to put on your high tensile wire for your fencing and your
insulators. So again bracing is probably the most important aspect of putting up
a high tensile fence without the brace your fence will eventually fail even if
you pound power poles in four feet in the ground eventually those poles will
be pulled out or start to pull in from all the tension of the wire. So the best
way to to brace your corners is by using an H-brace which is heavy duty long
lasting and relatively easy to construct.
