What Harold bought that day was, according to patent papers, a Phillips Stay-wire Fastener for wire fences. This machine, like the Kitselman, is designed to attach vertical (or diagonal) stay wires to an existing wire fence. However, unlike the Kitselman, the Phillips machine can only attach a single stay to a single longitudinal wire at a time. It was fairly complete and in relatively good condition when Harold obtained it.
“The (Phillips) machine only took around a year to get working again,” Alan says. “I had to replace the wood components and make some guides for it.” The first time Alan assembled the machine, he had parts left over. And even though he had handled every piece of the device, he had never seen its name. “One day I was looking at it in the shop, and the light was just right and I found Phillips on it,” Alan says. Armed with that information, he tracked down the patent, and was able to determine where the “extra” pieces fit from the drawings.
Fence making school
The fence-making machines immediately generated so much interest at shows that it was difficult for either Harold or Alan to break away from their exhibit long enough to grab a sandwich, much less see the rest of the show. “It got to the point that from the moment we set up to the end of the day, we had a line of interested folks,” Harold explains. “So we came up with a plan.”
The frames quickly became cumbersome to move around and set up, so the Eddys mounted two of them on the sides of a trailer, leaving room between for the rest of their collection. “Beginning in 2004 we could pull the exhibit out of the shed, tow it to the show, and within minutes be set up and running,” Harold says. The rolling exhibit offered show-goers the opportunity to turn the crank on the fence-making machines, which, along with signs, made it relatively easy for either Alan or Harold to tend the display alone.
Although the Eddys initially formed and installed barbs for the barbed wire demonstration by hand, it wasn't really very satisfying. “At the beginning, we had a difficult time hand-twisting barbs onto the wires,” Harold explains as he demonstrates his prized pair of barb-installing pliers. “It took four years of careful searching before I found the right tool.” Harold's quest for barb-installing pliers even took him to a barbed wire collectors' convention in Fort Scott, Kan. There, he learned that such pliers had existed, but he was wasting his time looking for something so rare.
“I was a little disappointed, but I kept looking at every swap meet and show I could get to,” Harold says. Just last year, while looking through tools on a swap meet vendor's table, Harold spied a pair. “The guy was using this tool to keep a stack of papers from blowing away,” Harold explains. “I asked to see it and was pretty excited when it turned out to be the real thing.” What Harold had discovered (according to patent papers he found later) was a pair of Dobbs & Booth Wire Barb Pincers. This tool is designed to tightly install barbs on a single No. 9 smooth wire, but it works perfectly on smaller wires when the barb is held in place by twisting a pair of longitudinal wires.
“Now we can easily demonstrate how several different kinds of wire fencing were made,” Harold says. “But we have plans for another setup.” Harold and Alan recently found a trailer that they can permanently dedicate to their fence-making display. When completed, it will allow them to demonstrate all of their fencing machines, the art of barb cutting and forming, and they will even have room to haul a few new treasures home should they find any. FC
– For more information:
Always on the lookout for fence-making machines, barb-forming pliers, Eddy Co. plows, plows with intact wooden moldboard, and other primitive farm implements, Harold Eddy can be contacted at e-mail: heeddy@socket.net
– Oscar “Hank” Will III is an old-iron collector and freelance writer and photographer who retired from farming in 1999. He splits his time between his home in Gettysburg, Pa., and his farm in East Andover, N.H. e-mail: willo@gettysburg.edu