Before crimping a terminal onto the end of a wire, you’ll first need to cut it to length, and that’s exactly what we are going to cover here in lesson #2 of this Wire Terminals playlist.
Cutting wire is super simple, given you have the right tools, so I’m going to share MY personal choices.
Wire Cutting 101 – VIDEO
Cutting Small Wire (22 to 10AWG)
I’ll consider ‘small’ wire to be anything smaller than 10AWG; and I have two tools I use for cutting these:
- 5” Diagonal Flush Cutters (https://amzn.to/3zCO7KP)
- 9” Diagonal Cutters (https://amzn.to/3zVEcjy)
The smaller ones have a spring in them that make them a little faster to use and I’ve heard they are a little easier to use if you’ve got smaller hands.
The larger 9” diagonal cutters are simply larger and have a bit more leverage.
The larger 9” diagonal cutters are a bit more versatile of the two and are my go to for multi-conductor wire that we will talk about later; so if I could only choose one… bigger is better in this case.
Cutting Large Wire (8 AWG to 4/0)
For wire larger than 10AWG, I’ve pretty much only got one tool for the job; and those are the Klein 63030 1” Coaxial Cutters (https://amzn.to/3S9eleq). For their size, it’s pretty wild how well they cut big 4/0 wire.
Now the Klein 63030 coaxial cutters will technically cut wires, 10 AWG and smaller; but they are pretty heavy, and the jaws have to be opened quite a ways to put wires inside; which is why I have all three sets of these cutters I’ve talked about in my toolbag.
Cutting Multi-Conductor Wire
You’ll likely have multi-conductor wire in your electrical system somewhere, whether it’s 10/2 romex, 12/3 Stranded, or 6/3 SO cord.
For all of these, I don’t have any different tools. I’m basically just going to use the Klein 63030 Coaxial Cutters every time.
That said; the 9” Diagonal Cutters will work on flat 10/2 or 12/3, but it may take a couple of ‘bites’.
Conclusion
To summarize all of this, here is a graph of what cutters I use for various sizes of wires.
Understanding there is some overlap between them, I’d say that the Klein 63030 Coaxial Cutters are a ‘must have’. The 9” Diagonal cutters are a ‘nice’ to have. And the 5” flush cutters are good if you are working with lots of small wire or in tight quarters.
We are going to be cutting wires throughout the rest of this academy, so be sure to bookmark this lesson for future reference and come back to it if you need a refresher because going forward, I’ll just assume that you now know how to cut wires.
