Baling wire

Baling wire, otherwise known as bale wire, farm wire, or soft wire, is a type of wire used in an agricultural setting and industrial setting for everything from mending fences to manually binding a rectangular bale of hay, straw, or cut grass. It is also used to band together corrugated cardboard, paper, textiles, aluminum and other materials that are processed in the recycling industry.

Baling wire is commonly used in many non-agricultural applications like in the recycling industry.

Baling wire is sometimes used in an informal, make-do manner as an easy fix. It is frequently referred to as one of the basic repair materials. Typical uses range from supporting loose mufflers to patching chain-link fences. Common phrases often include baling wire as an ad hoc, fix-anything material, alongside chewing gum, duct tape, and the cable tie.

In the United States, Australia, and around the world, baling wire was used in mechanical hay balers pulled behind a tractor. The balers used a wire twister that first cut then twisted the ends of the wire such that the bale kept its shape after the baler had pressed the hay into a tight rectangular bale. These hay balers were in common use up until the late 1980s. When the hay was fed to livestock the wire was cut and often hung in bundles or stored in barrels or metal drums around the farm. Farmers used the soft wire for temporary repairs of almost everything you could think of on the farm, from fences, old leather horse harnesses, head stalls and bridles, to pins to keep castellated nuts in place on the tractor. Even tiny screwdrivers were made by cutting a short length of wire and looping one end for grip. The other end was then flattened and shaped to make a screwdriver for specialized tasks like replacing the tiny screws in reading glasses.

Baling

Baling is a major town in the northern state of Kedah in Malaysia. It is also the name of a district in which Baling town is situated. It is south of Betong, the southernmost town in Thailand.

Origin of name

The name Baling can be traced to a series of events detailed in the story of Raja Bersiong (The Fanged King), a popular legend of Kedah, recorded in the Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa. Raja Bersiong was a ruthless vampire-like king with a taste for human blood who preyed on his subjects. His subjects finally rose against him and burned down the palace. When the fanged king fled his palace at the Old Kedah capital in Lembah Bujang, he fled to a place named Merbau and began removing his fangs by twisting them by hand. As a result of the twisting act, Merbau was renamed as Merbau Pulas where pulas in Malay means twisting.

After the king had successfully removed both his fangs, he threw them away to a faraway place. The place where he stood when he threw his fangs is known as Baling which means throw and the place believed to be the site where the fangs landed was named Siong, which means fang in Malay, one of the villages in Baling district.