Patriot porcelain donut insulator (10 per box)

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Porcelain has been used for fence insulation for a hundred years because nothing else lasts like it outdoors. It does not go brittle in cold, it does not chalk and crack in sunlight, and it does not slowly start tracking and leaking the way an aged plastic insulator does. On a fence you expect to still be working in twenty years, porcelain is what goes on the corners. The donut shape is built to take strain. You loop the wire through it and the porcelain carries the pull at a corner post, an end post, or anywhere the line changes direction and the load concentrates. That is exactly where plastic insulators fail, usually in the second or third winter, and usually in the stretch you cannot get equipment to. Wire them so the porcelain carries the tension rather than the fastener, and leave enough clearance from the post that a wind-loaded wire cannot swing over and touch wood. On old wooden posts that stay wet through a spring melt, that clearance is the difference between a fence that holds voltage and one that quietly bleeds it into the ground.