Grappling with the Gripple …
If you are as impractical as I am, you can be forgiven for thinking that the Gripple is a mythical character in a popular children’s book. Something perhaps from the enormously popular The Gruffalo, written by Julia Donaldson illustrated by Axel Scheffler. In passing I note with more than just a small pang of jealousy that the book has sold over 13 million copies, has won several prizes for children's literature, has been developed into a play that has been performed in the West End and on Broadway and is now an animated film that gets advertised on the side of buses! Unfortunately, my forays into writing econometrics have not proved to be so successful or lucrative. Indeed, if my worthy tomes had enjoyed even a small fraction of The Gruffalo’s success, I suspect that I would never have met the Gripple nor had to learn how to use it!
Having planted the orchard and erected the fence posts, it was now time to bite the bullet and start tensioning some fencing wire. After a lot of internet research and watching of YouTube videos on how to tie various exotic knots specific to fencing, we decided to invest in the Gripple system for joining and tensioning wire. Crudely speaking you feed strands of wire into a joiner and use the Gripple tool to tighten the wire to the desired tension.
I should have paid more heed to the warning on the packaging - Know your limits! - but alas it was all too little too late. Armed with the Gripple, we set forth to start our fencing with high hopes. Unfortunately, our first attempt ended in abject failure. Our straining knots were expertly tied off and our joiners were attached with aplomb. However, as soon as we applied tension to the wire, our posts were immediately pulled out of position. The fencing had to be put on hold while we sourced more logs to support several of the posts that we had left unfortified. Once more it was the turn of the circular saw and the 250mm decking spikes!
Apart from this minor mishap, the Gripple has proved to be a rather natty. The actual joiners seem to work very well, and the tensioning tool does the job, although the force required to the tension the wire is pretty wild. I am finding it difficult to apply enough brute force to get the wire to the desired tautness.
So effective is the system that I sallied forth and bought an additional feature, namely Gripple T-clips which allow the wire to be attached around a corner post without having to tie a knot. The T-clips look really neat, so we may use them on the gate posts, just to look good. There is a long way to go and many wires to tension before our fencing project will be completed, but both Cath and I have felt a sense of achievement at getting some of these wires into position and knowing more or less what is required.
Given this glow of satisfaction and the fact that the first official day of spring was drop-dead gorgeous, we decided to light a late-afternoon fire in the pit and enjoy the first frosty of spring …
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