A Wicked Harpoon Eyed Spring Loaded Mouse Trap From The Civil War Era. Mousetrap Monday

for today's episode of mousetrap monday i'm going to show you one of the craziest traps that's ever been invented the civil war era mouse trap consists of a wooden mouse with two razor-sharp spring-loaded harpoons that come shooting out its eyes i'll show you step-by-step how to build it and then we're going to test it out in the barn and we'll feed the mice that we caught to wild animals at the beaver dam so make sure you watch to the end because this is a really good episode did you know there's over 4 000 patents for mousetraps and the day for mousetrap monday we're going to test out one of the all-time craziest i first saw in this book the gopher mouse rat and mole traps price guide second edition 1994. when i opened the page i couldn't believe what i found it has two diagrams of a mouse shaped trap with a spring-loaded harpoon that comes shooting out of the mouse's head it was patented by j.w ellis on april 13 1869 just after the civil war so we'll go ahead and do a patent search and learn more about this trap it's a pretty simple process especially if you already have the number you just type it in the box in this case 88778 and hit the search button and then click on images here are the original drawings for the trap and down below are the inventor's signature we'll go ahead and scroll back up and click the arrow button on page two we have the text of the patent this is an early one and it's pretty short just over a half a page for reference i went ahead and printed off the patent drawings there's a nice side profile and two figures showing how the trigger system works inside there's enough detail to make a working model so let's go to shop and start building we'll start by carving the mouse shape body for this trap from wood for this project i'm going to use the best material i have a very dense slow growing tree i collected in the deserts of south central oregon known as mountain mahogany it's ideal for carving because the growth rings are so close together this branch represents over 75 years of growth to make the wooden blank for our trap we're first going to have to remove the bark and white wood to do this i'm going to use a chisel and then we'll secure the split log in a vise and plane it down with a hand planer [Music] [Music] [Music] as the figure of our mouse takes shape i switch out from a cutting to a sanding tool to work out the rough edges and then i finish it with a fine grit sandpaper to form the features such as the paws ears whiskers and eyes of the mouse i burn them in with a glowing hot piece of metal so based on the patent drawings we now have a wooden shell we can use to make our mouse trap the next step is to make the spring-loaded trigger for the trap which includes the piece that will be the tail the harpoons that come out the eyes and the piece the mouth steps on to release the spring i'll form the two trigger components out of a square metal bar we'll also need a thinner wire to make the two harpoons and the power of the trap will need a compression spring i bought a compression spring variety pack at the home depot and one of them was the perfect size for what we need so now that we have all the materials to make our trigger components we'll go ahead and start shaping the metal [Music] [Music] i found the patent drawings to be very helpful when making the trigger the top piece which will be the tail has a hook in front and will fit in perfectly with the bottom latch now i modified it slightly to have a double trigger one that's deeper and more secure and one that's shallow and much more sensitive we're now ready to put all the components of the trigger system together the compression spring fits on the top tail piece and to keep it from sliding forward we'll insert the wire that will form the harpoons and then everything fits together in the groove in the bottom piece and when you pull it back it latches together and with the trigger complete we now need to carve out the wooden mouse to fit everything inside [Music] here [Music] and the final step is to sharpen the harpoons after all that work here's our completed trap i'm really happy with how it turned out those harpoons are wicked sharp they have great big barbs on the end they come shooting out with quite a bit of force now the one thing about this trap is it's pretty difficult to set it takes two hands we'll go ahead and pull it i had that on the sensitive trigger i'll try to get it on the deeper one so it doesn't go off there we go boy don't get your fingers anywhere near the front we'll put the bait right there the mouse will come along face to face touch it that'll go right in their brain our poor stuffed mouse he's tested out a lot of traps but i think this is the first time he's been harpooned now the question is does it work with real mice i'm going to test it out but i can't show on youtube mice getting harpooned we're going to set up our mouse trap inside a cardboard paper towel roll the mouse will go in the tube take the bait on the trap it will set off that way we can still see the trap in action so let's go set up the motion cameras in the barn and see if it works on real mice you you

Channel: Shawn Woods (Mousetrap Monday)

Views: 3,527,441

Rating: 4.749496 out of 5

Keywords: Shawn Woods, Mouse Trap, Mousetrap Monday, Pest Control, How to catch a mouse, mousetrap review, mouse trap electric, mouse trap bucket, mouse trap quicksand, mouse trap commercial, mouse trap kills mice, mouse trap bottle, big mouse trap, victor mouse trap, rat trap bucket, antique mouse trap, vintage mouse trap, rare mouse trap, civil war mouse trap

Id: 0M5XP5R7wHk

Length: 8min 3sec (483 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 23 2019