CRW Cage Hack

11 years ago

Just did a roll of CRW cages for my new garden. I'm going with 10 Squares, but besides that, I have a 3 year old who loves to be in the garden with me and I was concerned about the metal ends of the Wire that are left when you bend them around to secure the cage. I didn't want to go with the clean cut and zip tie method but I did find a solution. I bought a 250 pack of a small size electrical wire nut and screwed them onto the end of each exposed wire. I think it was like an $8 purchase. I also bent each of the wires up slightly so the rain wouldn't collect inside the wire nut and cause it to rust out prematurely. Aside from a nice thumb blister after screwing on the 200th + wire nut, Everything else seems to work fine. Not sure how long they will last, but I would imagine at least a few seasons or more.

Something similar to this but not the exact ones I got. http://www.lowes.com/pd_26064-12704-30-451JL_0Z2z8vk__?productId=3128375&pl=1&Ntt=wire+nut

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Comments (3)

wormgirl_8a_WA
11 years ago
Great tip - thanks for sharing! Post a pic if you can!
coconut_head
Original Author
11 years ago
Will do!
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PupillaCharites
11 years ago
last modified: 11 years ago
I made 15 remesh cages a few months ago, for the first time. I didn't want to use anything additional.

I just bent the ends with a drive extension bar of my hex ratchet wrench (you know - the set that was $5 made in China from Autozone on sale for ... Father's Day LOL) so only a reproducible length of the tip looped inward. When you do this a small hook is there. The approach I took was with some vise-grip pliers. I adjusted it to close incompletely, up to a gap of about half the thickness of the CRW diameter. Then I crimped the remaining distance to close the hooks tightly, driving the hook-tips into themselves to make closed loops.

The closed loops present no sharpness danger for these done this way. It took a little practice to get in assembly line mode, but if you get the knack of it the sharpness is totally neutralized by catching the last mm of the tip the right way. I prefer this design because it maximizes the circumference rather than wasting the leaders or putting them to protrude where they could present a danger. I used ten squares plus the complete leader up to the 11th on many without including the 11th vertical, which was left to begin the next cage. If I were not pressed for space I would have wanted one more square though. Compromises, compromises.

No blisters, but I did sport a couple of cool Wolverine cuts on my legs in the process of making the cages ;-) A protector on the end of each might afford something extra, but that extra would have been unnecessary as far as I can judge on these.

Hope that presents yet another option.
PC