This wood post broke just leaning on the stack, CCA, nine bucks.

Our favorite material for fence posts here in Tennessee is either locust or Osage orange. Rumor has it that a locust fence post can wear out three post holes before it rots!
Jerry

That may be, we still have a few honeysuckle post as old as I am. No way you can drive a staple in.

You need some hedge/bois d'arc/osage orange.

Hard telling how old this one is, set by grandpa/great grandpa I'm guessing on a fence that has since been removed. Brace post made for an impromptu jungle gym a few years ago for my boy.

We have lots of termites in our area. Only wood posts that seem to last very long are railroad ties or utility poles. There are some old mesquite posts that have lasted a while. Steel seems to work best.

Lists of moisture here, creosote poles are good. Treated doesn’t last as long.

What he said!

The stuff they treat wood post with now days is junk. Creosote was definitely the best. We have some mulberry post that have been there since 1950. There are 5 on top of a deep sand hill. I figure the water draining away quickly is what has kept them from rotting. Cant drive a nail or staple in them, either.

Thank God for good cordless drills and 1/8" drill bits. I have many sixtyfive year old black locust posts in my fence lines. Staples easily enter predrilled holes and they stay.

Living near the oil patch there's lots of pipe available....

I just built some pipe corners for son in law.

We get good posts from North Dakota of all places.


Green right to the center.

This stuff will ruin bugs teeth.

Best farming decision I ever made was to go to creosote and steel posts with 4 strands of Red Point bob wire and a high tension electric wire in the middle. Except for trees falling on the fence or somebody hitting with a piece of equipment never had a problem with fencing or cattle out on the four lane directing traffic.

Did anyone here know Osage Orange and mulberry are in the same family? I think there is lots more silica in hedge though. Be Well, Rustyzipper.

bob wire. LOL.

I use Bois D Arc when I have them available. Other than that its cedar or treated. Can't get the creosote anymore. But I've seen those rot too at times.

Gotten to the point I put in 10 inch bottom cedar from the farm most times now. Bigger hole, PITA but those cedar last a bit longer than the small line posts.

I have been taking out a fence that was put in around 1975. Creosote posts. All of them rotten and have been for at least 5 years. We do get a lot of moisture. If it was a dryer climate they could still be standing but not in Iowa. I'd like to know how long the green treated posts last in Iowa. Not that I will be alive to do anything with them is 25 or 30 years but My kids will.

kwg

Sixty yeas ago, the Drikes, and I think that is spelled wrong, could be bought all over. Good creosote posts, and poles.

Then Dirkes went to penta treatment, no nearly as lasting. We still have many of the good posts in use.


Any use or see the concrete posts? They are good until the wire loop that is to hold the fence wire rusts away.

some of the pressure treated stuff these days is total junk. snow plow snapped off a 4x4 a couple winters ago just by tossing snow against it and the mailbox. when i see people putting 2nd story decks up on those things i just cringe.

i wish you could buy creosote still. i still have standard grade fir 2x6's that me and my dad creosoted and built a porch out of in the mid 70's. when i tore it down, they were still good.

Our local store sell, "Creosote" posts, they stink badly enough, but the black is panted on, they still run nine bucks for a line post.

Years ago, our neighbor gave a dad a stack of old locust 4x4's that he'd had sitting behind his barn for years. Dad had us kids use them for fence posts. We spent a week putting them in but when we started to string wire, it was a lost cause. They were so hard that it was impossible to get nails in them. We even tried drilling them but those little drill bits would just get hot and break. We ended up digging them all out and using them for firewood.

You have to drill slowly and often retract the bit to clean it. I still break one once in a while. But 1/8 drill bits are pretty cheap.

Use the twisted wire stays? All they do is space the wires. I've used them on wire gates, they look nice until they get bent.

Drill stem is what I use. No wood in my fences.

I put in a lot of Black locust posts and just got a new supply. Had some of the bigger ones squared up.

Now your grandkids will have to replace them in 50 years.

If you can't drill, just wrap around with barbless wire.. easy enough

When I bought the place in '88 there was a crosstie used as a post at the entrance gate. It has a 1944 date nail in it. Was cut during WW2 but is still solid and in place. On my really wet ground (it's Louisiana) I've had metal posts rust into at the ground. We built an interior fence in 1988 with Osmose treat posts and most of them are still good.

Jealous!

I was up on the family farm just the other day, and the 4-strand wire fences (2 plain, 2 barbed) I helped my father and grandfather put in forty or so years ago are still all sound. Ironbark posts IIRC, from trees which we cut and split in the local forest, all given a good dose of creosote around the base before the earth was rammed in. All the digging, drilling for wires, and mortising for the props on the corner posts was done by hand too.

Was thinking that. Figured looping the barbed would cost too much...

Western Kansas used limestone posts because no wood was available. 100 year old posts.

That’s awesome. Old Beretta?

Beautiful picture and doing what needs to be done regardless of what's available super cool.

Juniper used here. Mostly set up with 3-4 T posts between each juniper post. Juniper used at gates and corners.

BLM fence that borders our property is getting wonky now. Folks I've talked too say it was here when they moved into the area in the 70's, so 40 years +??

Getting to the point where it will need fixing soon. Neighbor's cows don't push through it though.



Had my firewood friend deliver me a bunch of logs I intend to cut into posts for the new garden. I figure they'll be there long after I'm no longer here.

Geno

Cheesy,

that's one of the top fence post pics I've seen on this here 'fire.

Geno

Unmarked German 16 gauge from 1919. The German gun nuts on some other forums said it was likely a Sauer action finished elsewhere.

Out there in “post rock country” (really called that) those fences go on for miles. Many still standing today. The amount if work to mage those posts is mind blowing to me.

Iowa strong.

I don't know how effective it is, a old farmer friend of mine drills a hold in the top of his fence posts and fills it up with diesel fuel once a year. He says it keeps the bugs out and stops them from rotting. I haven't seen him change out any due to rot, just trees or cattle.

I've never bought a new steel post, hundreds of used ones.

I've seen locust posts sprout and start growing.

It is a big family... figs and breadfruit in there too.

My Grandpa and his brother had a quarry where they would cut the limestone posts. He told me they used mules instead of horses as mules were able to pull more. My mom said she remembers playing with Grandpa's quarrying tools when she was little. Mostly feather and wedge. Wish I had those tools.

G23

Just wow. I suspected, when I read limestone posts, that you were referring to rock cribs. I have never heard of a solid stone post before.

I wonder how well they hold a staple?

I see no holes in the wood from locust borers. Our trees are heavily infested with such. How do you prevent them.

We don't need no stinkin' fenceposts, said the Irish.

Yeah, but by the time they got the rocks out they did not have enough dirt left to grow a potato!

I have not seen a infestation here in southwest Wisconsin.

That is interesting, I wonder if our issue is due to our desert climate.

This part of the country was settled from about 1900 through the 1940s as the irrigation systems were constructed. Most of the farmsteads included an 1/8 mile to 1/4 mile of black locust planted into a row for future harvest as fence posts. Those groves thrived up through the 80s.

Since that time the locust borers have girded the large trees and perforated the limbs of new growth so badly that each wind breaks out many of those young limbs.

The insect infestations combined with younger generations who do not recognize the locust's value for fencing materials. Probably more accurately the loss of small family farms with small herds of milk cows, has led to almost a complete elimination of local locust groves.

I miss the lovely sweet scent and beautiful flowers of the blooming locusts each spring.

They were Africa before Africa was cool!

If all the stones came out of the fields, no wonder they couldn't grow taters.

I’ve spent a lot of days cutting fence posts, mainly cedar but quite a bit of locust as well. Last few years I had to deal with fences, however, it was just walk around with a couple of Amish boys and tell them where we wanted fence, where we wanted gate. Faster, cheaper and better than my brother and I would ever get it done.

Don't remember seeing any black locust around here, we've got too many honey locusts though. The thorns on those things will teach you to watch where you're going in the woods.
Somebody said something about locust sprouting in the post hole, Grandpa said that's how hedge/osage orange got started around here. They shipped in hedge from texas and some of the green posts sprouted. It and the cedars have taken over many of the pastures in this area.

Wonder if they have a little Dutch girl in Ireland saying global warming causes the rock walls to grow and the dirt to sink....