The only way I've ever seen to hand tamp clay down tight is the way my dad showed me & brother many years ago, and it was a terribly labor intensive and slow process..and we only did it on the ends/corners/brace posts, not the line posts. Didn't matter to dad--his labor was free and our spare time was infinite in his eyes. Dad didn't believe in the extra expense of concrete--or Tee posts either for that matter. (This was back when wooden line posts were almost dripping with real creosote)
1. Dig the hole--at least 4ft deep, and at least 3" wider in diameter than the sawn utility pole or cross tie you were using.
2. Drop the post in, centered in the hole. Get it straight and held in place with whatever way you could out in the middle of the woods.
3. Take a 5 gal bucket of water with you. Pour about a gallon of water in the hole around the post. Crumble the clay up enough to easily fall all the way to the bottom of the hole. Get a stick, like an old hoe handle with a square end on it, and starte jabbing it down and turn that red clay into a thick mud. add more water--add more clay, jab and make that dry clay into a thick slurry again. The heavy particles will fall out to the bottom, with the thinner water/clay slurry rising to the top each time. Keep doing that incrementally until it's solid all the way to the top and the water is coming out of the hole.
4. Go to the next big post and repeat.
5. Go to the other end of the fenceline and do the same thing.
Wait several days before stretching wire, but those corner posts would be like the original earth had just closed in around them, tighter than ever.
I've done a few like that in the years since and I absolutely hated it, but those utility poles will last 40 years--got some here still holding 2000' feet of 5 wire brother and I put in mid 60s. Good surplus crossties will last almost as long, but the down side is my auger drills round holes and the cross ties are rectangle shaped.
I used to build fence to
last a lifetime. Now, I just build everything to last MY lifetime.
We stretched wire with the only comealong my dad had, and it had a handle about 3 ft long. No cable. It had a chain like the kind you see used between 2 steel sprockets.
Pretty sure, if you could hook on to it, you coulda pulled the moon out of orbit with it.
Now, I almost always use sakcrete. A 3 1/2 to 4 ft deep hole, with 1" clearance around the post. 1 1/2 80lb sacks of sakrete usually does the trick almost to top of the hole, and then I use soil on the last few inches. Dunno if it works, but have always heard using dirt on the top allows water to drain away from the post.
If the fence is fairly close to the house and in an open area, I'll mix the sackrete in a wheelbarrow. If not, I mix it in the hole, putting water in first, then pouring dry sacrete in a few pounds at a time. I have tried also, just putting the dry sackrete in the hole during rainy season--haven't noticed any difference between the 2 methods.
Down by the river, where the ground is sand down about 8 ft, I've used a pair of clamshell post hole diggers with one side of the clamshell bent outward, to bell the bottom 1 foot of the hole. I always use sackrete down there. For the post to pull out of the wet sandy ground it has to pull the overbearing sand load that's on top of the bell shaped set concrete.
I've never had to deal with frost heave here of course, but read an interesting discussion on another board. A couple of guys up in Maine said they eliminated most of their frost heave problems by using wooden posts with a pointed end on the bottom. The frozen ground and ice doesn't have a flat bottom to heave against. I have no idea if it is true or not, but sounds right.
Ron...my experience with building a new fence thru the woods...
In 2008-2009, before I had all my place logged and cleared, I built a straight line, 5 strand barbed wire fence 2200' long thru the woods to delineate between my property and my older sister's property since I was pretty sure she was going to put her property up on the market and i was unsure if I could buy it from her or not. I knew only 2 things. Exactly where the property line was on the National Forest end and where the property line was down on the other end at the river. I drove a tall steel pipe in at the river, spray painted it bright orange, and attached some reflective tape and shiny alum tape to the pipe. I had made up my mind after trying to repair 40 year old 12 ga Red Brand wire that had been stapled to trees that there would be no trees for posts on my fences from now on. I could drive to each end along a powerline easement on the forest side and an old log tram road along the river, but not to any of the middle. I just started on the forest side, cutting a pathway i could walk thru with a chainsaw and brush blade on a big Stihl weedeater. The big stuff, I cut into small logs I could roll out of the way. Finally got it cleared out enough I could sight down my rifle scope and see the reflective post on the other end. Not wide enough to drive down, but I could walk down it.
I had 2 old 4'x8' single axle trailers here, neither good enough to ever put on the highway, so I made one into a fencing trailer. Put a pickup truck toolbox on the front, 2x10 sides and cut a notch in the top of each side to drop a piece of pipe into to hole a spool of barb wire. Loaded all my stuff up on it, and parked it on the forest end, back end facing the river direction. Put one big post in the ground right on the property line marker on each side, and I planted them deep and used my rifle scope to determine exactly where the brace posts would go so the wire wouldn't have an offset it in at the ends. I knew I was going to have some gateways along the fence, but would add them after the fence was up and straight.
Loaded up my 1st spool of wire on the pipe, grabbed the end and started walking East with it. Let me tell ya something. It may seem like that would be easy enough, but after the first 100 yards, think about how many barbs there are along that wire, and every one of them grabbing grass, vines, stumps and stobs... I was already 58 years old and not in the best shape, and it became a fight pulling that wire. Didn't help that there were 3 little water ways I had to cross with it either. I'd get to the water, tie a string on the end of the wire, tie a weigh on the string, throw it across, walk down 100 yards or so till there was a crossing, walk back up the waterway to my string end and pull the string and wire across the waterway. I sure wished a couple times, that I had a mule to do the pulling. All those barbs are a lot of friction to overcome, even on clean ground. If I had it to do over again, that top (first) strand would be slick 12ga HT.
One day, I had pulled about 3/4 of a roll and it just didn't 'feel right' as I pulled. I stuck the end of the wire down in the ground, trudged all the way back to the trailer, and saw the spool had worked off the trailer, and I had dragged the spool of wire about 100 yards down from the trailer. I just shook my head, left everything sitting and walked back to house and poured myself a big ol dose of Makers and sat on the porch the rest of the evening.
Got the 1st 1420' ft spooled out, stapled the end to the nearest stump, then went back and all along the furrow those barbs had cut, i cleaned out stobs, vines and nailed pieces of old tin across the top of the big stumps, and bent the ends down so the barbs wouldn't catch. Didn't help too much. Every new strand dug a deeper furrow and grabbed roots that were down deeper.
Hauled my trailer to the river end, got set up, and drug off enough wire to reach the other wire and tied in a good splice.
That first string of wire, I fixed on the corner on the forest end since my trailer was now down at the river. Chained off on the post nearest the river with 2 comealongs hooked end to end with their cables all the way out, making that the top wire and started stretching. 12ga Bekaert USA made wire. Good stuff, but I had never pulled 2200 ft of wire at one time before. I had one of these,
but wasn't sure it would hold without slipping and decided to do it like we did when I learned...
Got a long 3/4" eye bolt and used two 3/4" cable clamps to hold it to the wire and hooked the second comealong's hook into the eye.
I pulled the wire in 1/2 the first two times I tried it, one of them right in the middle of a waterway. :bang:
After I got the first strand tight, I went along, drove a teepost in every 50 yards or so and tied the wire up so it wouldn't get grabbed by the next strand.
I did buy that property from my sister, and ended up with 5 gateways in that fence but the fence is straight as an arrow. I generally not self effacing, but when I look at that fence now that the place is cleared, I'm pretty proud of it and can't help but think my Dad would like it.
