How to Install a Brace with a Twitch Wire - YouTube

We are going to show you how to build a H-brace using wood posts.

We've got our end post, our brace post, and our top raile.

So when you hear us talk about the different components you'll know what that is.

So not a whole lot in this brace as far as that goes.

We do have in here a short brace pin, we've got a long brace pin here on the end that

we drive part way in and we leave a little bit sticking out so we can catch our twitch

wire on it.

A twitch wire is that diagonal wire that we put in there.

And we're going to do this one with a high tensile smooth wire and we're going to tension

it up with an in-line strainer.

Basically the wire goes in there and this ratchets it up tight.

We'll fasten it together on the smooth wire using a crimping sleeve squeezed together

with a crimp tool.

So in order to get started, what we're going to do is the twitch wire always goes from

the top of our brace post to the bottom of our end post.

So we'll take a single staple, go down here to the bottom, and drive it in sideways.

And we'll just take a second staple, drop it down on top of that and that's just so

we get some nice movement of our wire and it doesn't dig into it.

Up here on the other end, we'll repeat that process.

We'll take another staple and put it in sideways, and we'll take a second staple.

I'm using a panel staple as it's a little big bigger.

And then we just take our panel staple and we drop it over there and it goes over our

brace pin.

That gives us a nice surface area that our brace cable will slide around.

We're going to use a high tensile smooth wire for our twitch wire.

Again that is our diagonal wire on there.

We're going to put it together using a crimping sleeve.

We take that crimping sleeve, it's a figure 8, and one wire goes in the top and the other

wire goes in the bottom.

So we slide that down on the wire, we take our in-line strainer, put it on here like

that, and I always bring it over and I take this wire and give a nice bend.

That way when I put my crimping sleeve on there it's a nice flat surface and I can just

slide it up there like that.

So that's how we do that crimping sleeve.

Now we are going to take a moment and crimp it together.

So we are going to use our two-slot crimp tool, also available from Bekaert.

And our crimping sleeve we want to make sure it lays right in there real nice on the sleeve

and the two grooves in the tool.

Then we'll just take that and squeeze it together.

We'll move our tool down a little bit, squeeze it together, mover our tool down a little

bit again, and squeeze the tool together, and that's our finished crimp.

Now, in order to clean this up a little bit, we can take that wire, bend it up like that,

and go around our wire a time or two and we can break that off.

And it gives it a nice finish on there that is not going to catch on anything.

Okay, so there are a couple of different ways that we can go around the post with our wire.

I like the figure 8 method.

Basically the reason I do that is it keeps my in-line strainer away from the fabric and

also, if I'm building an electric fence, it brings that together a little bit where you

don't run into the problem of the wire touching it.

You can just make a couple loops like that as well.

It's just a matter of personal preference.

Basically we are going to make a loop, we start behind that post and we come up here,

come back down here, around to the front, and at this point we can pull some of our

wire off and keep working that around.

And we bring it up and around the top again and we'll come back down here with our wire.

And I'll come around the backside.

So now we want to push this wire down and get

it over our staple.

So now we've got it up there and we are going to pull this together right in here.

So again, practicing safety, we will make sure we have a good grip on that wire.

Now I'll hold these two together.

So now, we are ready to start tensioning it using our in-line strainer.

The in-line strainer actually has a hole in it right here.

And we're going to stick that wire through that hole.

I'm going to move this up just a little bit.

And we'll go through that hole, as you can see, make sure that you're still underneath

there, bend that back a little bit and just manually get some wraps on there so that it

doesn't come loose on you.

One of those areas where you're going to want to pay a little bit of attention to your wire

because it can sometimes slip out of there and we don't want you to get hit in the face

with it.

So now to tension this, we take our handle and our handle drops right down over our in-line

strainer like that.

Again there's a number of different styles on the market but they all basically tension

the same way.

So we are just going to ratchet that together.

Now before we get too far along, one of the things we always want to check is that you

want to come up here and make sure that your wires aren't overlapping each other.

And the same way down here, we want them to lay one on top of each other.

At this point you can grab your in-line strainer and give it a little bit of a jerk.

And then you continue to ratchet that up.

So that is basically what it's going to look like.

Again we've got to make sure we lay the wires nice and flat over your staples.

Come up here, same way, make sure the wire run right across the staple.

Now to finish this up, I usually grab one more time like this and just give it a good

pull.

You can see I got a little bit more slack out of it.

We'll go ahead and tension that a couple more clicks.

And that's good!

The idea of the twitch wire, and the reason we put that in there: Our wire is going to

be tied off right here on the end.

So as we are pulling the wire this way and tensioning it this post wants to move.

So as this post tried to move that way, it pushes our top rail against our brace post.

The tension on this wire increases and literally pushes that post back down into the ground

and keeps the whole brace square.

General rule of thumb on this is that we want the length of our top rail to be 2.5 times

the height of our fence.

So if you're building a four foot fence, ideally you want to have a ten foot top rail on it.

If we are building a five foot fence, you want to have a twelve foot top rail.

You put it together the same way and remember, the twitch wire always goes to the bottom

of your end or corner post.