Homemade Barbed Wire Roller

Homemade Barbed Wire Roller FENCING Miscellaneous 26-5-35 My barbed wire roller mounts on back of my pickup and will roll up a quarter mile of wire in only about eight minutes. It works so well that local fence contractors have asked to borrow it. It consists of a 5 hp Briggs & Stratton gas engine that belt-drives a 14-in. wide spool. I made the spool by mounting an old grain drill disc at each end of a 1-in. dia. pipe. An idler pulley that's controlled by a handle is used to engage the belt and start the spool rolling. Another lever is used to move the wire from side to side so that it winds up evenly on the spool. I've made 12 spools for the unit. By removing a 1/2-in. nut from the pipe, I can slide one spool out and replace it with another one. It works great when tearing out fences. To use it I first remove the wires from the posts and lay them 1 to 2 ft. apart on the ground, and then start rolling them up one at a time. The 5 hp engine has a lot of pulling power and will pull a wire that's sitting in brush right up onto the spool, as long as the brush isn't too thick. Another advantage is that the wire is wound so neatly that it can easily be unrolled when building another fence. I made a separate machine equipped with prongs, on which I set the spools. I can use this machine to roll out up to four wires at a time. (Joe E. Miller, 35756 Huttensen Lane, Burns, Ore. 97720 ph 541 493-2478)

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