OT My dad has some old barbed wire at our farm

Bitmap · Post by **Bitmap** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 7:55 am

There are three different types of fairly old wire. In at least one case it is an entire spool from the store, never unwound.

Does anyone have any use for this kind of stuff? I'm thinking of trying to find a couple of more types and make some crafty type stuff with it. You know, cut out the outline of Texas in wood and mount short pieces of these on it.

Is there a collector's market for old barbed wire? If so, let me know. I don't know if these are particularly rare but they don't make them like this any more.

Here are samples of all three.

You can see that A and B have folded sheet metal type barbs. They are similar but B has a tighter twist and the barbs are closer together. B also has one more twist between barbs than A. C looks like modern wire but the barbs are longer, or at least longer than the stuff I see at the local farm store.

If there is any interest in this kind of stuff we could probably dredge up some more different styles.

Give me you suggestions on what to do with this stuff. Any small profit we could make would help pay for more ammo.

kimwcook · Post by **kimwcook** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 8:35 am

A and B look to have some age. C looks modern. I'm no expert by a long shot. Google?

cnjarvis · Post by **cnjarvis** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 9:16 am

There's a collector's market for everything. Think I'm kidding? People collect stuff made from bakelite, old post cards.... ad absurdum.

Check out evil bay and google it. I'm sure you'll come up with something and please let us know what you find out.

Ben_Rumson · Post by **Ben_Rumson** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 1:11 pm

There are books about it in the Libraries too..I found some barbed wire from the 1870s.. & researched it.. There are for sure collectors of it.. The stuff I found sort of looked like the razor wire on prison fences..However it was galvanized.. What was kinda neat was that it was stapled onto a what was left of wooden fence that was probably there before barbed wire was invented..

Sixgun · Post by **Sixgun** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 1:22 pm

C is what you see today, at least here in the East. You might want to hold on to it all because with the election coming up and all. If the liberals get in, I see a revolution coming and your going to need it to wrap around the homestead to keep the illegals out!

-------Sixgun

Griff · Post by **Griff** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 11:59 pm

Sixgun wrote:C is what you see today, at least here in the East. You might want to hold on to it all because with the election coming up and all. If the liberals get in, I see a revolution coming and your going to need it to wrap around the homestead to keep the illegals out! -------Sixgun

+1

Jeeps · Post by **Jeeps** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 12:20 am

Item C is the one I'm familiar with, I have many a scar I can attribute to item C

Cherokee · Post by **Cherokee** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 12:34 pm

I know item C well.

Bitmap · Post by **Bitmap** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 1:56 pm

Not to be too pissy, but for the guys that know item C well and know it is modern, please take a look at a few of these and check the dates on the samples.

The 2nd from the top looks similar to me, from 1881.
http://www.murraycountymuseum.com/brc2.html

The top one here from 1879.
http://www.murraycountymuseum.com/brc4.html

The top one here from 1874.
http://www.murraycountymuseum.com/brc8.html

The 2nd from the top from 1878.
http://www.murraycountymuseum.com/brc9.html

The 3rd from the top from 1879.
http://www.murraycountymuseum.com/brc11.html

The 4th from the top from 1878 is sort of similar.
http://www.murraycountymuseum.com/brc13.html

The 4th from the top from 1875 looks similar.
http://www.murraycountymuseum.com/brc16.html

Can someone familiar with item C tell me the differences between what I've got and each of those?

Maybe Jeeps or Sixgun or Cherokee can tell the difference and let me know.

Not being an expert on barbed wire I can't see much difference in the pics and might not see the difference even with a close look at both in person. Probably the difference is in the particular way the wires are twisted and/or stapled to make the barbs as well as differences in the material of the wire.

I'm not saying that I have an antique wire, but the last time my grandpa had cows on that farm was in the 1950s, and I don't know for sure when the last fence was built there, but before WWII is possible. Certainly it is likely that some of the fences still there were built before WWII and maybe even before WWI. I'm not sure, but I don't think there was a Tractor Supply around that area in those days selling wire like we have now.

I plan on taking samples of these to The Devil's Rope Museum in McLean, TX and see what they have to say.

Bruce Scott · Post by **Bruce Scott** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 5:40 pm

"I plan on taking samples of these to The Devil's Rope Museum in McLean, TX and see what they have to say."

Interesting pieces. C is familiar but I have never seen the likes of A and B. Please let us know what they say.

There are definitely some barbed wire enthusiasts out there - http://www.antiquebarbedwiresociety.com/collector.html

cas · Post by **cas** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 11:53 pm

Hmmm... we have lots of the "Brinkerhof Twisted Ribbon" type still up in many places, as well as one of the "barbless ribbons" where my family hunting camp is. Interesting to learn it's age.

Jeeps · Post by **Jeeps** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 4:58 pm

I wish I could help Bitmap, but C is the only kind I'm familiar with and all I
ever had to do with it is fix fence, climb over it, even ran into it a few times
with a dirt bike. But I have no real info about it except to say I'm glad it
wasn't concertina wire

The second time I was in Korea we stayed in Pohang (sp?) for a week before
going to the field. All our equipment was surrounded by concertina wire and
an old Korean man rode a bicycle right into it just after dark one night.

I think it took them like an hour to get him out, it was four tiers high

Griff · Post by **Griff** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 5:54 pm

When I said "what you see now", I was referring to the spiral wrap wire barb as opposed to flat barb as in A & B.

I have about three different vintages of wire on my place. The earliest, I'll assume is from the early 1970s, as that is when the place was sub-divided into smaller places from the large farm.

I'm not sure when the next was bought, but... it is a galvanized wire I acquired along with other supplies when I bought to place, and was used repair this section in the early '90s (1990s, thought you'd caught me, huh?)

The latest is all galvanized, and I purchased this roll several years back, and re-strung this section a few days ago.

Other than galvanization, I don't know of too much improvements in barbed wire in the past 100 or so years.

I did notice that "C" in the original post showed a double wrap with each barb at the same end of the wrap around the strand; whereas nowadays you generally only see a single winding or a wrap and Â½, with a barb at each end.

Buffboy · Post by **Buffboy** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 6:57 pm

I'm no expert on barbed wire but the bottom is likely newer than the two on top. I've seen all the above on fences I've fixed or replaced(that should tell you something about the condition of some of the fences I've fixed in the last 40+ years).

The top two are at least (IMO) 90+ years old. Flat barbs went out of production because the wrapped wire style of barbed wire was considerably cheaper to manufacture. The bottom one doesn't look like that early a form of the wrapped wire. The bottom could be newer by only as little as 10 years but I'd guess it's likely only 60 years old and could be much newer.

bobbyjack · Post by **bobbyjack** » Sun Mar 16, 2008 2:00 am

Old band ribbon wire is one of the oldest,you don't see it much!

Bob