Review on HITTITE 100-Pack Dog Fence Slats Hook And Wire Ties For Chain Link Fence, Repair And Maintain Your Fence With Heavy-Duty Aluminum Ties And Hooks by Cedric Edwards

TL;DR: 4.5 stars, would buy again, a high quality product, would benefit from hex drive, slightly inaccurate description.I’m a hobby farmer or homesteader scale tinkerer. In collaboration with a neighour we experiment with a small herd of cattle and are just starting to build our our electric fencing systems. This is the first tensioner of this type I have used.General impressions are very good to excellent. Making such a device perfect would only drive up the cost so some good compromises on design without sacrificing durability are in order. The body of the ratchet is steel (magnetic) with some kind of coating presumably anti-rust (see below). The reel/ratchet itself is in as cast condition in aluminum. The spring which also forms the pawl for the ratchet appears to be Stainless Steel (non magnetic but looks like steel).The sheet metal body is heavy material at about 2mm/0.077”. The thickness forms the bearing surface between the aluminum hub and the body so between the sheared face of the hole and the rough cast aluminum hub the motion is rough but still a reasonable compromise and you can easily turn the hub by hand from the outside/ratchet teeth.The body does not appear to be galvanized but it is coated with something. I tested this with ordinary gun blue which will turn zinc black. The surface is non conductive unless you scratch it or press hard but it is resistant to alcohol, acetone, and lacquer thinner so it is not likely paint. The sheared edges are treated as well as the surface so it was treated after fabrication but likely before assembly. My suspicion is that the purported "galvanized” is an aluminized or zinc/aluminum coating possibly passivated. If this is correct it is as good or better than galvanize or zinc plating.This device could be used for poly with one modification. The two holes in the hub for passing the wire/poly through are not chamfered so the sharp edge would be hard on poly. The hole is large enough for my squishy 1/4” poly or 3/16” poly. I’m not sure how this would work with high tensile wire it seems like too small a bend radius to me.One negative is that the drive for the hub can’t easily be used with a socket. The drive is 14mm square and the corners are rounded so even a 12pt socket will not drive it. You have to use their tool or an open ended wrench. An upgrade would be to make that drive a hex.I will attempt to update this review with field trial information in a few months.