Barbed wire fences were an early DIY telephone network
Barbed wire might be a great invention but my personal experiences with it are not so rosy.<p>I was cleaning up my property and found some laying on he ground from where there once stood long rotten fence posts that had since decomposed completely.<p>While cleaning it up by wrapping it around a piece of wood, I learned the hard way that safety glasses are essential when working with it...An end of a strand in an almost lifelike manner whipped up and slashed me across the the bridge of my nose and my right eye lid.<p>That was but one experience, since that time I have had the pleasure of laying under my backhoe with bolt cutters to remove 100s of feet that ended up wrapped around the front axels and walking through puddles in my gum boots only to realize the dreaded stuff had struck again by putting invisible holes in the bottoms of them.<p>I believe I have managed to collect the majority of the abandoned wire but now I face the dilemma of what to do with it. I don't want to take it to the land fill and make it someone else's problem but don't want to have it in my way either as it is very heavy and cumbersome to move.<p>My only idea is to get a forge or smelter and transform it into a less menacing product.