Hardware Cloth for Coop

??

I am confused. Wire thickness is specified via it's "guage"; the lower the number the thicker the wire. Your statement saying "17ga before coating19ga after coating" cannot be correct. 17ga wire is 0.0453" thick, 19ga is 0.0359" (per https://precmfgco.com/wp-content/up...Wire-Gauge-AWG-Sizes-and-Properties-Table.png).

Galvanizing with zinc is always under 10 microns, usually 6. A micron is a unit of length equivalent to a millionth of a meter. In short "coating" a wire will not change the thickness of wire to any meaningful degree.
Some coated products don't list the true gauge before coating.
 
Using anything smaller than 1/2" is false economy in my mind. I use 1/2" on everything, and then if it is a window that I want to cut down rain coming in, I use a layer of 1/4" over it. 1/4" stops rain from penetrating into the coop surprisingly well.
 
Some coated products don't list the true gauge before coating.
6 microns (the thickness of galvanization on welded wire/hardware cloth) is 0.00023622", 19 guage wire is 0.0359". There is no practical measurable difference between coated VS non coated wire.

Edit: thickness for galvanization above should be doubled as the coating goes on both sides of the wire. Still mouse nuts!
 
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More trivia...... In general, when the mesh size (width of holes) doubles the cross-sectional area of the wire strands also doubles.
 
More trivia...... In general, when the mesh size (width of holes) doubles the cross-sectional area of the wire strands also doubles.
Let's see if I have this correct.

1" by 1" gets 1 sq in of cross sectional area. Correct?

2" by 2" gets 4 sq in.
3" by 3" gets 9 sq in.
4" by 4" gets 16 sq in.

More than doubles it seems?
 
Let's see if I have this correct.

1" by 1" gets 1 sq in of cross sectional area. Correct?

2" by 2" gets 4 sq in.
3" by 3" gets 9 sq in.
4" by 4" gets 16 sq in.

More than doubles it seems?
I think they meant that the wire gauge increases with the hole size.

More trivia...... In general, when the mesh size (width of holes) doubles the cross-sectional area of the wire strands also doubles.
That's why I thought a 1" mesh would have heavier gauge wire than the 1/2" mesh.

There's a plethora of wire meshes out there, not a ton of standards and lots of different colloquial names.
 
@aart is correct. One can get multiple wire guages in many of the standard opening sizes.

Certainly this is the case in the sizes most commonly used by BYC folks (1/4, 1/2" and larger).

Practically only a subset of available guages are available in feed stores, big box, TSC, etc. I have not investigated but likely the most common are the best value/performance for poultry containment/predator protection.
 

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