James,
It is 4:00 PM and I have been out since 7:00 AM this morning repairing and running new barbed wire on my property. I ran about two miles worth today. While I was out enjoying the sun and spring air I got to thinking about some of the profiles in your database and how some of our friends say they X amount of Razor Wire ready to be installed when TSHTF [1]. I would like to suggest that during or after TSHTF is the wrong time to be doing this kind of work. It is back breaking, dangerous work to be done by experienced people.
As I take inventory of the puncture wounds, the cuts, the scrapes and other sundry wounds I incurred today I wonder how in the world a city couple with little or no experience is going to manage putting up plain old barbed wire much less seriously more dangerous Razor Wire in a hurry after some event ends the world as we know it.
I have been doing fencing here for over 20 years and therefore have some degree of experience doing it. No matter how you try you will tear up your leather gloves, put holes in your t-shirt and your Blue Jeans. You have to stretch Barbed Wire and you need the proper tools to do that. Even if you wrap the wire around your hands and lean backwards to stretch it and have your wife run from post to post either nailing or wiring it up you will be dead tired and bleeding some multiple places. Oh, and by the way so will she.( I know this because the first time I did it I watched my wife running from post to post). Barbed Wire is heavy and uncooperative. It wants to roll back up onto the reel it just came off of.
So a word to the wise, if you really think you need to have that Barbed or Razor Wire consider putting it up now while you can do it leisurely or have the local Amish do it for you. – Carl in Wisconsin.