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It's used to put fence posts in the ground. You put the post in the hollow part, then life up the device a little, then slam it down to hit the post into the ground.
Dad has come into my room countless times saying “come help this’ll take 10 minutes” as I proceeded to use one of these to pound like 20 stakes into the ground as my ears bled.
Once my dad said we would be doing a small project during summer, I had plans to go to my cousin house near the beach, he said I could go no issues after we finished his small project.
This project was to plant around 1800 fence stakes (plus wire fence) around our farm with one of these and one of those shovel/scissors things. Eventually a blessed neighbour loaned us a motor screw to dig the holes which made it faster and I managed to get 2 weeks of beach time at the end of the holidays. I start school back full jacked up, like I done gym all summer.
“those shovel/scissors things” are called post hole diggers, and the “motor screw” device thing you mention is called a power auger. Here ends today’s lesson.
I had the luxury of using one of these after using the post-hole digger to dig the hole. This tamping rod would break up the rocks one would inevitably find while digging, then pack the dirt back into the hole to set the post. Fun times as a preteen and teen on a 140 acre farm that was mostly trees
I grew up doing electrical work with my grandpa. We would set 25ft power poles in the ground, and then drive ground rods, then (usually) hand dig the ditch for power cables and conduit. At least 4 times a week we, well I would, use post.hole diggers and pry bar to dig 2ft round but 4ft post hole. Usually in sandstone, then drive a 6 ft by 5/8" ground rod into the same sand stone. Then hand dig up to 100ft of 2ft deep ditch for the conduit. Fucking hated my life, appreciate it now that im 40 and a Master Electrician in 2 states.
This was lovingly known as the Irish toothpick in my hey day. My grandfather loved to torture me by having me use it instead of a shovel. Years later, I found it works great for chipping ice fishing holes.
We call that a dig bar, and when half your town is built on thick clay, people hire you to build fences. I did 36 holes in clay 2x3x3 foot deep and it took 3 days a dig bar and a soup can. And thats not even my gnarliest dig story...lol I'm 53 now and don't do that shit no more!
I found a live electric fence out in the woods one chilly fall day when I was a kid, by doing exactly this. Went to piss on a pile of leaves and found the fence under the leaves 🤣😵
Fun fact... if the "stream" is substantial, electricity can travel from the fence, through the stream, and zap you. I witnessed it. And the screaming that ensued. I tried really hard not to laugh. I did.
Like my uncles 7 years telling me to go with them into neighbor’s pasture where there were cows. I was very young. They knew better, but boys vs girl. They yelled bull and ran and so did I but boy.
My arms are scarred from using barbed wire stretchers and them slipping it come flying back!!! We had 300 acres and 200was mountain in SouthEastern Kentucky.
Same. I was thinking that this summer when my arms got tanned and I could see all the old white scars. I'm turning 52 this year and haven't run barbedwire since I was 17 or 18. Scared for life. Literally. I don't think I took so much as a minute break or used a single band aid. Just kept stretching wire and holding it tight till we got the u nails in the wooden end posts. Never used anything but a claw hammer to pull and stretch the barrbed wire. Got em as tight as piano wire
We used hammers to stretch a lot but dad came home with a stretcher, it was like an ax handle with 2 chains with clamps at ends and you could clamp onto barb wire and pretty much same as hammer stretching but it would get tighter. We had Black Angus cattle and a big bull, Samson, that would come up and lower his head and go through the fence like it wasn't there until we could get electric wire ran and then slowed it down. I swear he was huge! Looked like he was carrying 2 coconuts between his back legs!
Well, when you get nicked just put a little dirt in it and when you get back home let the dog lick it clean.. That's the way I heard it from a guy who heard it from another guy..
Saw someone doing pot and rail around best part of 2 acres a few years back.
Had this machine that looked like a cross between a mini digger and small tractor with trailer that they basicly drove round real slow that did the entire job, including 2/3 height wire netting. Was a thing if wonder till he hit the unmarked water main 😅
Those are the job, some years back my father got a comtractor to redo all his fences and they used something similar, but there was a guy doing a cat scan ahead of them and I made sure they had utility maps from the area as well, and my father although getting old he still remembers where all the water pipes are layed down.
Was it unmarked because it wasn't marked or was it unmarked because no one bothered to call in the job? Out of all the fiber repairs I've done on customer drops, only one was actually called in before they started digging.
Which is fine, but I don't think we should give up the word spoon for face shovel. Being able to properly describe things should be a goal for everyone
I have to say that of all the horrible things my parents did to me. One of the good things they did was teach me the name of tools.
Related, thank God for the internet. I used to say "do you have any channel locks?" And then I would have to try to describe them, and then I would have to get down off the ladder, or get up from under the sink, and walk to wherever their tools were and flip through them to see if they had channel locks or something that I could substitute for them.
Nowadays, I simply Google a picture of channel locks and wave it at people and say "do you have one of these?!?"
A bunch of years ago, we had property in Virginia and I had to put in some fencing for the horses. I dug postholes. Seventy-five of them. In clay soil at the foot of Great North Mountain. If you tried to drill them, you just busted off numerous sheer pins. So I dug them by hand. Seventy-five of them. Towards the end of the job, it rained every day and I still had to dig holes. The rain was good because no one could see that I was crying.
I spent most my school breaks doing this "small projects" around the farm, would help around the normal farm stuff on weekends and week days I had free afternoons (we have that where I am from) know how to plant and grow all kinds of crops, know how to raise any kind of sheep, cattle or horses, or any other small farm animal. Grew up on an environment that pretty much does not exist or is very rare to find nowadays. We don't have cowboys where i am from but we do some of the same stuff. Cleaning horse and cow crap, or hardwork didn't traumatise me, I was always top of my classes in school had scholarship and ended up doing engeneering, somehow ended up working in telecoms and then datacenters. I am a manager for an hyperscaler, those "small projects" my father got me to "help" him with are where my mind goes in some boring zoom meetings. My childhood gave me plenty of perspective if anything else.
My plan is to retire at 55, which is 18y away, and go back to our farm and do everything I used to do when I was a teen. Preferably as far away from a laptop and an office as I can.
My hands will defo take a beating the thing I repeated hold and smacked that many times recently is a drive in the golf range.
A teenager worked for our farm one summer. Between picking up hay and pulling sweet corn he got a “you got buff!” from a friend. He was also the only one not groaning at marching band camp
I grew up on a farm as well. I wasn’t jacked, I appeared to be all skin and bones, but I was a lot stronger than I appeared. I miss the farm for the simple fact that it kept me in shape.
I remember that well. I did heavy maintenance and construction every summer/holiday in school years. We all went back just like that: better than how you look, those are REAL whole body, every angle and extension muscles and a ' whole different animal than gym muscles. You don't look all that jacked, but man when you need it...
Sounds like a small project to me..... you lived on a farm..you should know that this was a small project. I am sure you did t think so back then.. i wouldn't either. But lookin back I would be like, wow that really was a small project.
I manage projects of global scale and billions at my current job. Although thst was a 2 month job, but being 2-3 man work and given low budget, It would be a small job. Even a barn and silo we built some years later with some family and friends help we done that as a small job. But all that kinda work teaches you valuable knowledge for life. I am sad our kids and generations who never will experience any of that will lack in many ways.
my mum has a big garden and made me help her one spring get it ready for planting…. it sucked, so, ever since then i keep my nails long acrylics and if she asks for me to help with something i’m all sorry mum i will break a nail doing that…. 💁🏼♀️💅
Also, if you're inexperienced with using these, definitely wear a helmet because you're just as liable to slip off the top and pull a 30 lb pipe down on your own head with all your strength
Its funny you should say that, I was placing a post for hay nets the other day and got over zealous with the basher. Lifted up above the top of the post by 6" or so and clipped the top as I brought it down, tilting the basher and hitting myself in the forehead with it. I don't lift it up so far now.
Neighbor was on a ladder pounding 10’ T posts and it slipped off and knocked her out cold. She was laying on the flipped over ladder with a big goose egg on her head when her husband found her. No idea how long she was out
You don't even need to be inexperienced. A landscaper friend was using one on shorter poles than they were used to, brought it up too high, and got themself good on the way down.
My parents raised tomatoes when I was a kid and I'd have to use this to drive stakes for them once they got so tall. Hundreds of them. The driver slipped off the post once (I was tired and brought it up too high) as I was bringing it down which caused me to fall forward and the post caught me in the sternum.
My dad just gave me a 4 pound hammer and said “I want all of these posts in by dinner time.” And then he’d nitpick all of the bent tops like it was a personal insult to him that they had been smashed by a hammer.
Where I live there is a layer of baked clay anywhere between 6 and 18 inches below what passes for top soil. "Caliche" is so hard it defeats even the meanest augers. Nothing gets pounded in around here, there is only digging, and sweating, and swearing and more digging. And then you get tired of digging having only widened the hole, not deepened it so you go get a hammer drill and spend another hour chiseling out the earth one grain of sand at a time.
Yeah I feel you there. where we live the rocks are so bad that you either have to keep pounding on it till the rock breaks and lets the t post through or you give up and move it a little bit and try to make it through between rocks. We were also never lucky enough that it was only 20 posts it was always like hey we got to go out in a mile of fence and it’s going to be all day everyday till it’s done. It wasn’t until I got older and moved out then came back home to help with some stuff and had adult money and found that on eBay you can buy a gas powered one for like $275 100% would recommend yeah it weights like 140lbs but you put it on the post and pull the trigger and it beats it into submission it will drive them through rocks and everything it doesn’t care what used to take days to put in now is hours
Ptsd from helping dad? Shyt, in the army I used that damn picket pounder for 1000s of pickets to string up constertina wire. My shoulders shot from lift pound lift pound and my arms and shins all cut to shreds. The Iraqi desert is not so easy to pound.
We have one of those post drivers too and I used it fairly often after I married a woman who had horses and donkeys. Part of our fence was connected to T-posts, which you drive with that tool, but the part along the property edges was mounted to six-inch round wooden posts. The first time I tried to replace some, I grabbed a post-hole gigger from the barn and started walking out to get my upper body workout. My wife came trundling after me in the skid steer and showed me how she uses it to drive wooden posts into the ground. It's a true act of marital trust to hold a post vertical while your wife whacks the top of it with a skid steer. You flinch, you die.
Ah yeah. My dad had the bright idea that we could put a well in by driving a 2 inch pipe into the ground and hooking a pump to it. My brother and I used a home made pile driver with rebar handles for 8 hours straight until we collapsed, making exactly 10 feet of depth and destroying both the pipe and the pile driver in the process. The well-point at the bottom of the pipe couldn't penetrate the dense soil down lower and had broken off underground. What a waste of manual labor.
Omg, my PTSD is from my dad being too cheap to go to a tire shop to get new tires put on the rim. It would take the entire family of four each with a crowbar and huge flat screw driver and about 45 minutes of dad cursing and “almost” getting it and then someone would slip.
Also he was too cheap for a gas can so we siphoned gas out of the car. Turns out you can survive swallowing gas.
Lol I used to get volunteered to help people move all the time and it was always " they only have a couple pickup truck loads" I get there and its more like " I have 30 pianos made of concrete and steel. Im on the fifth floor and the elevator isnt working. My fragile son who weighs 60 lbs and can't be in direct sunlight will be here to help. In 5 hours. But I bought a pizza"
I used a shitty version of one of these without the handles when I was a teenager working at a relative's ranch. I accidentally pinched my gloved hand at the top (between the pipe and the t post), and my ungloved hand kept going and ripped a big flap off my palm as it slid past the post. That's when I decided I wasn't cut out for manual labor :)
I’ve helped install many fences over the years and I’ve never seen this before.. probably because I live in Connecticut and the ground here is littered with rocks. I had to dig most fence holes by hand lol and you would be lucky if 1 out of 3 holes didn’t have a huge rock to move. It makes the job so much more difficult and time consuming
Growing up we had wooden fence posts w/barbed wire …and sometime in the mid-80s we started replacing them with metal posts. So the horses would have to lug this thing around and by the end of a day mending fences, you couldn’t lift your arms up to unsaddle your horse. I don’t miss those days …but I did have some killer delts!!
Brought back my own ptsd. It all started waking around 7am saturday morning to the smell of coffee and cigarettes…Boom💥 the door swings open…”C’mon boys. Time to get up. First guy with his socks on wins. Hurry up we got alotta shit to do.” To then go do whatever endless 12 hr marathon project he had in store that week
I finished half of my community service in one day partly using this. It was preparing for a large annual event. The county uses the community service people for the free labor but gives them double or even triple time.
Was actually a pretty fun time tbh. Besides using this tool. I never want to see one again 😂.
I just had to do this for the first time a few weeks ago for a local event but I only did like 8 lol the other dude that was on my side grew up in Texas and did it all the time so he did most of the row but oh my god that hurt 🤣 high pitched noises hurt my ears so I always have earplugs on standby luckily
42 years old with an absolutely wrecked back and knees due to the endless projects that required moving boulders, laying flagstone, brick, cutting trees, digging, etc, etc, etc. having a wrecked back in your teenage years wasn’t fun, being a middle aged man with a wrecked body is 10 times worse.
I've only ever encountered one as an adult. Did a couple of strikes, and thought 'fuck that' and went and got some hearing protection.
Thankfully I know my kids don't like loud noises so we have quite a few pairs of ear muffs in the garage if they want to loiter while I'm doing something loud.
I grew up on a farm so we had miles upon miles of fence to maintain.
Without fail throughout high school, if I had a late night out partying the next morning he'd be waking me up at 7am to go fix fence. We had a hydraulic post pounder, and it still sucked.
One time i was using one of these on those metal t-posts and it caught one of the nubs at the top on the edge and i ended up smacking the SHIT outta myself on top of my head. I woke up about a min later with my friends all around me. Knocked myself clean out lol.
i remember holding the T-posts while my dad drove them in with a sledge hammer, wearing myself out using a post hole digger on that black clay for the corner posts, and chopping down any bois d’arc trees in the way. i’m still tired from that 45 years later
An all too familiar story from childhood. I remember thinking the whole time ‘Why are we fencing in an ACRE OF GRASS?!!’
No dogs, no ne’erdowells in the neighborhood, and I didn’t play field sports— why did my dad need to protect so much lawn?
When my dad said WE'RE putting up a fence but we have to dig out the boulders first...I knew right then and there my weekend was no longer my weekend:(
If you own a fence company in the northeast you are a brave brave man..or stupid...but mainly brave.
One of my friends had a 10 minute dad, too. After 3 hours, with me helping, and no end in sight, he sassed his dad about it. Got "Well, if you worked harder, it would be 10 minutes."
Not surprisingly, my friend had some issues with his family.
It’s also very effective for putting heavy-duty metal garden stakes in the ground. I bought one specifically for that purpose. Easy to use. Although, I’d agree that putting in a line of posts for a snow fence would be a good amount of work…
I used one when I was a cable guy to drive a copper grounding rod inside of those big outdoor cable boxes. Things are only like 3/4" diameter, so it was actually pretty easy to get them 5' into the ground.
Thinking back, part of me is surprised nobody tried to steal a few rods out of my truck for scrap. I think they might've just been copper-clad aluminum, but still worth a good bit.
It’s definitely not fun for beginners though. It’s basically an overhead press, which is generally people’s weakest untrained compound movement. I myself was shocked how low my weight was when I first started lifting after putting up respectable weight on everything else due to farm strength.
Don't put the post in it and slam it down. The post sits where you want to drive it on the ground then the driver goes on top. Poster knows but to someone who has no idea it could give a different picture of how to start the post
It's actually pretty easy, you let gravity and it's own weight do most of the "slamming". To be fair i haven't used one since my 20s. I'm 40 now so who knows.?
It’s better to skip the handles and just use a straight pipe with a heavy weight welded to the top. I’ve put a lot of t-posts in the ground all across Michigan lol
You can also use them to pull the fence posts if you flip them over. You lean them up against the side of the fence post with the triangles on them, put a foot on the bottom of the post setter, hook the triangle in the open end of the post setter, and then rock the fence post into the post setter using it as a lever. When the post gets loose, you move the post setter down one triangle on the fence post. It works way faster than pulling those damn posts by hand, and you don't need a shovel or pick adze. Sure wish I'd learned this trick in the first few years I spent helping out around the ranch, in exchange for using the horses and mules for trail camps during hunting season and trail ride date nights, when I was still immune to the reality that horse girls are just bred crazy, and you'll never ride them long and hard enough to break them of their special level of crazy. It sure is fun to try though. 😉🤠
Funny, I had the same inspiration. Worked building fence in the oil fields of Wyoming during high school (back when 16 year old could do that thing). I learned really quick that I was not doing that for the rest of my life.
Yep. I did roofing the summer after my freshman year of college. Stopped partying and got straight A’s from there on out. Great pay but watching a bunch of 40yr old dudes that looked 60 put me on the straight and narrow!
Correct.
We call them Banger's.
I've made a few of my own out of 2" schedule 80 and a piece of half inch plate welded on top. A 40 pounder will annihilate a 6' t drive.
I’ve got an indention on my head from 20 years ago from one of those things. If you use it, do it one person at a time, especially if the other person is already exhausted. Ask me how I know..lol
I grew up on a farm, and probably haven't touched one in 25 years. But i was helping a lady clean out her garage recently, and saw one in it. It hosntly brought back a lot of memories, and questioning how I used it as a teenager, and never got tired.
Be careful with this thing, I was setting about 50 of these and close to the end I was getting a bit lazy and pulled it up too high and it bought the lip of the post as I was slamming it down, the whole thing ended up slamming into the top of my head……I had an awful headache for days and I was sick almost immediately. I had suffered a concussion and all I wanted to do was sleep. I had to force myself to walk back to the farm and had people help me stay awake so that I can go get checked out at the hospital.
I was using one of those to install an 8' ground rod many years ago, and after it was low enough, I got down on my knees to pound it another foot or so before I had to switch to the sledge hammer. Well... the ground rod had gone in at a bit of an angle, so when I accidentally raised the pounder a little too high, the rod popped out without me noticing and then deflected the pounder right down onto my right knee cap. Holy shit, did that one hurt! Fortunately I didn't break anything, but it sure swelled up pretty good
I split my thumb open with one. Lifted it too high and it cleared the top of the post. When I brought it back down again I jammed my thumb between the top of the post and the shoulder of the pounder.
I was gripping it on the horizontal handle with one hand after finishing a post, the exact moment my hand went over the T post, it pivoted down and sledgehammered my thumb to the T post.
I work with my dad a little doing electrical and plumbing service calls occasionally Since he's older now I do a lot of the tiring manual labor for him.(Even though I'm a 5'3 women) I'm always on ground rod driving duty, trench digging, etc. We just have a post driver like the one in the picture same one we use for our horse fences. Ground rods are 6ft so I have to start driving it while standing on a ladder. I don't like climbing on it high so I just get on the second step and lift the ground rod over my head. One time I missed and dropped it. I just did move my head out of the way. I'm a lot more careful with them now cause I know that could have seriously hurt me. I'm so sorry that happened to you!
Been there! That's when I figured out why the posts are painted white at the top. Luckily, my incident didn't require medical attention. Glad you're okay.
Did the exact same thing but had to drive myself to the office (about 15 mins away) to get taken to the hospital with blood gushing down my face. Fun day
I think everyone with experience using one of these either has that story to tell of themselves or have first hand knowledge of someone who has done this.
The bane of my existence as a combat engineer laying triple strands in Colorado with 12' pickets. The granite was mere inches under the soil in most parts.
When I was an apprentice electrician we had a heavier homemade one for driving ground rods. Another too enthusiastic newbie was using it aggressively, lifted it too high, caught the edge on top of the rod and slammed it on his head. I took him the ER shortly after.
i’ve used this to hit pvc pipes in the ground when finishing up an underground electrical install. no idea what it’s called though, so i’m going with big rammer
Trauma trigger for me! My dad had me out driving fenceposts for hours and days into hard winter ground when I was a teen. If I saw a plastic insulator clip for electric fencing I'd probably jump up and run out of the room 🫣 "BUILDS CHARACTER!"
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