Posted 6 years ago
TheGateKee…
(222 items)
Sometimes taking a chance pays off. The jumble of wire was listed on a internet site. I could see one rare wire that I did not have in my collection, so I bought the lot sight unseen. Had to drive 300 mile round trip to pick it up. (Collectors will go to great lengths to add to a collection.) When I returned home and sorted it out to my amazement there were quite a few rare wires in the bunch. This was someone's collection from the 1960s - 1970s. Probably been stored away in an old barn for 30 or 40 years. I have posted highly visible wood block wires before. This bonanza had 4 very nice examples of two different patented wires. It was very common for farmers and collectors to replace the wood blocks that had been burned away in grass fires, or weathered away. These are examples of that. The top wire is a patented wire by William Jane & James Hill, of Boone, Iowa. The second wire is barbless version of the patented wire by Hiram B. Scutt, of Joliet, Illinois. The third is the same Scutt patent with sheet metal barbs between the wood blocks. The last one is my favorite. Some enterprising farmer made his own visible fence by cutting a picket fence and adding barbs to the wood blocks, The barbs were created by cutting a long staple lengthwise, inserting it through the block, and hooking the curved end of the staple around the wire on the opposite side to hold the block in place. Very clever.
Fascinating! I certainly learned something new today from your post. I saved a bundle of very old and rusted wires from the fencing that used to mark our property border (it's all deteriorated now). It looked really cool and I couldn't bring myself to throw it out. I had no idea wires are a collectible item =)
How wonderful that you found some rare ones you needed and got the extra surprise pieces when you untangled them . How do you do that without getting poked ? I sure remember running into our barb wire fence on farm and it was quite painful :-)
Very carefullyyyyyyy Manikin.
Every time you post wire I kick myself so hard. I was metal detecting out on the prairie in Kansas and old wire kept setting off my detector. I finally spent an hour rolling up the wire and hung it in a tree as useless junk. Later I was in a museum in Topeka and saw what it was worth a foot. I went back to get it but never did find that tree.
fhrjr2, they took the wire with the tree =))
Nice write up! I grew up on a large dairy farm in northern WI. I remember putting up, fixing, and stretching barb wire for our Guernsey cows and heifers. My dad was a jack of all trades as a farmer and came up with some good field tricks for mending the fences. Thanks for posting....it brings up some good hard working memories :)
Thanks buckethead. Now I know where your moniker came from. I also grew up on a farm. You can take the boy out of the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the boy.