Making Crab Pots Part 1. How to cut square chicken-crab pot wire quickly and accurately

The first step in making my crab pots for the season, which start April 1st for me, is to cut the wire to length. I buy the welded wire mesh (square) directly from the manufacturer, Riverdale Mills. They sell all of their secondhand wire through a site they use called www.valuewiremesh.com. This is how they off load wire they can't traditionally sell to their distributors. They can sell it directly to consumers. And I get it at a better price than going through their distributors. There are a few spots within each role that have issues with them like bad welds or missing or too much galvanization. All in all they are good quality for I use them for...crabbing.

Cutting hundreds of pieces of welded wire mesh is messy, time consuming and tedious. You have to be precise with your cuts. I find the fastest and most accurate way is to use an angle grinder with a metal cutting blade and just free hand the cut. I score the top of the line, bend and break the first cut, then flip over to finish up by cutting the blunt ends off. The whole cut takes about 30 seconds, which is fast in this business...in my opinion.

I'll show how I assemble the rest of the pot, including what other material I use, in another post.

Hope you all are well!

With Love,
Chris