DIY Mousetraps

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Mice are a real attack that you won't wish on the enemy either. And if in the summer these voracious creatures actively run around the summer cottage, then with the onset of autumn they begin to look for a warm place for wintering. Of course, they almost always choose a country house for wintering, which is why smart summer residents are in a hurry to place mousetraps everywhere! What if there are a lot of mice, but few mousetraps? The answer is obvious: try making your own mousetraps

Classic mousetrap

For the construction of a classic trap, you need an 8x15 centimeters board made of plywood one and a half centimeters thick. And for the manufacture of all other parts, it is necessary to obtain galvanized steel wire, the thickness of which ranges from one and a half to two and a half millimeters. Gas welding wire is very well suited for these purposes, the main thing is to make sure that the metal does not heat up when bending the workpieces.

The main part of the classic mousetrap is the spring clamp. To make it, you should measure about forty-five centimeters of wire, the thickness of which should not exceed one and a half millimeters. Next, a 10 mm round bar is tightly clamped in a vice, after making a small cut at its end with a hacksaw about one and a half centimeters deep. Then five centimeters retreat from the end of the wire and, having laid it in the cut, they begin to wind around the bar in fairly dense turns. As soon as there remains about twenty-five centimeters of wire, the remainder is directed in the direction opposite to the initial tail and the resulting spring is stretched to five centimeters. And the long tail is bent with an equilateral U-shaped bracket, making sure that the length of each side is six centimeters. The penultimate corner is not completely bent: the edge of the wire is tucked into the spring, and its end is removed from the back side, after which it is turned to the side and a bend of about five centimeters is left.

To fix the spring on the base, the base is halved in length and drilled one centimeter from each edge along a two-millimeter hole. Further, a twelve-centimeter piece of wire with a thickness of two and a half millimeters is brought inside the spring and, bending down the edges, thread it through the holes. Pass through the base and a short tail, bending it together with the spring fastening on the seamy side (and the ends are tightly hammered into the wood). Then, in the center of the front and rear parts of the future structure, two short loops are fixed and a fixing needle is made, one of the ends of which is passed into the back loop and wrapped in a ring (the length of this needle should be about thirteen centimeters).

As for the bait hook, it is quite permissible to make it out of thinner wire - the hook is threaded into the front loop and its ends are twisted half a turn, while one edge is bent with a hook around the knitting needle, and the second is slightly taken to the side (it will be attach the bait). And when the mousetrap is finally assembled, the needle should be cut so that the hook with the bait in the cocked position is located one or two millimeters from the edge of the mousetrap.

Bottle mousetrap

Such a mousetrap implies a more humane way of trapping mice. To make it, you should take a sufficiently deep plastic bucket, the walls of which will not allow rodents to get out again. Then, through a liter bottle (in the absence of one, it is quite permissible to replace it with a tin can), pass a piece of rather thick steel wire or the most ordinary welding electrode. The trap should rest on both sides of the bucket (ordinary wooden boards are used as approaches to it), and a bait is carefully placed in its middle - as soon as the mouse tries to get to the bait, the bottle will turn over and the rodent will fall right into the bucket!