Steel trap

“ Among the first requisites and of the utmost importance to successful trapping is the possession of an outfit of well made Steel Traps.
That the young trappers may understand what are the requisites of a good trap we will describe in detail one that has held its own in the estimation of the professional trappers for sixty years, and then we will endeavor to point out wherein the many so-called "improvements," that have been put on the market, have uniformly failed of success. ”

“ The bear Dead-fall, described on page 17, is, perhaps, the most commonly used, and the Pit-fall, page 31, and "Giant Coop" trap are also excellent. The Gun trap and stone dead-fall, page 20, we also confidently recommend. When a steel trap is used it requires the largest size, especially made for the purpose. It should be supplied with a short and very strong chain firmly secured to a very heavy clog or grappling-iron page 147. ”

“ To have enough steel traps to set one at each is something few trappers do, yet two or three deadfalls in connection with a line of steel traps is all that is necessary and the trapper can move on to the next bluff where dens are numerous and set another trap or two. As a rule it is where there are many dens, close together, that deadfalls make the best catches, yet when you find a good den anywhere, set or construct a deadfall. ”

“ The manufacturers claim these points in their favor. They are somewhat lighter than the regular form of double spring traps and the trapper going far into the woods can carry a greater number; they set much flatter; can be set in smaller space; springs are out of the way as no spring extends beyond the jaws; pans are large so that no animal can step between the jaws without springing the trap. The traps are set much the same as other steel traps. ”

“ Experienced trappers fully appreciate the importance of having a trap that when the animal is caught, it is caught to stay, and instantly killed instead of being held a captive by the foot or leg.
Many fully realize the importance of a humane trap that will accomplish this, and have found many good points in the Tree Trap. Most practical trappers know that one of the most successful ways to set steel traps for many kinds of animals, is to suspend the bait about two feet over the trap, compelling the animal to step on the pan of the trap in order to get at it. ”

“ No solution has been found to the problem of a substitute for the steel trap for rabbits and vermin. So the steel trap remains a painful necessity, as those know who have tried to keep great numbers of rabbits within bounds. But steel traps are sometimes used where more merciful ways of catching rabbits might serve as well. Rabbit catchers who never think for themselves, but do things only because they have always- 33 - done them, will use steel traps where they could save themselves much labour, and the rabbits a good deal of suffering, if they were to use snares. ”

“ Of course we all admit the steel trap is more convenient and up-to-date, says a New Hampshire trapper. You can make your sets faster and can change the steel trap from place to place. Of course the deadfall you cannot. But all this does not signify the deadfall is no good; they are good, and when mink trapping is consumed the deadfall is the trap you want. To the trapper who traps in the same locality every year, when his deadfalls are once built it is only a few minutes work to put them in shape, then he has got a trap for the season. ”

“ Natural channels, such as hollow logs or crevices between rocks or fallen trees, offer excellent situations for steel traps, and a good trapper is always on the qui vive for such chance advantages, thus often saving much of the time and labor which would otherwise be spent in the building of artificial enclosures, etc. ”

“ Traps thus rigged will, of course, weigh more than the bare trap and are more bulky and cumbersome, but where one is trapping in a timbered country the crotch need not be cut until upon the ground where it is to be used, or if in a section where timber is scarce, could be placed beforehand where it is to be used, just as one would do with stakes, rocks, drags, or clogs, spring poles and the like, when setting steel jaw traps. ”

“ Steel traps are almost exclusively used by the professional trapper, and the supply for a single campaign will often exceed one hundred and fifty. Many of the traps described in the early part of this work are also used, and for the amateur who has not the ready cash to layout in steel traps, are decidedly to be recommended and will be found very efficient. From thirty to fifty traps would be a fair number for an ordinary amateur trapping season, and the probable cost of such a lot would be from $15 to $25. ”

“ Yet, under favorable conditions I prefer it to the steel trap in trapping some animals, and it is certainly a little more humane in its operation as it usually kills its prey almost instantly, therefore it saves the animal much suffering. ”

“ HINTS ON BAITING THE STEEL TRAP. There is a very common and erroneous idea current among amateur sportsmen and others in regard to the baiting of the steel trap; viz., that the pan of the trap is intended for the bait. This was the old custom in the traps of bygone times, but no modern trap is intended to be so misused, and would indeed often defeat its object in such a case, wherein it will be easily Page 144 seen. The object of the professional trapper is the acquisition of furs; and a prime fur skin should be without break or bruise, from nose to tail. ”

“ The jaws spread sixteen inches, and the weight of the machine is forty-two pounds. It is extensively used in the capture of the moose and grizzly bear, and is the largest and most powerful steel trap made in this or any other country. The springs possess most tremendous power, and require to be set by a lever, as the weight of an ordinary man has not the slightest effect upon them. ”

“ Rust on traps.—Rust is often the cause of the failure of traps to spring properly, particularly when the trap pan rusts on its post. Most steel traps are so constructed that when the trap pan is moved back and forth it will spread the joint and thus permit the pan to work freely. Putting a few drops of fine oil on the post, as well as in the slots that hold the jaws at the base of the trap, will overcome such difficulties. ”

“ Them traps save the trapper going round so often, but they're expensive, and heavy to carry, and you have got to be awful hard-hearted before ye kin use 'em. I tell ye, when I thought of all the sufferin' that Mink went through it settled me for steel traps. Since then, says I, if ye must trap, use a deadfall or a ketchalive, one or other; no manglin' an' tormentin' for days. I tell ye that thar new Otter trap that grabs them in iron claws ought to be forbid by law; it ain't human. ”

“ Next procure a fragment of the same stone, or a piece of steel from some one of the traps, and strike its edge sharply, and with a skipping stroke into the further side of the tinder, the direction being such as will send the sparks thus produced into the inflammable material. Continue this operation until the tinder ignites. By now gently fanning the smoking mass it may easily be coaxed into flame. At least so our Adirondack guide told us last summer. ”

“ Dry timber could be used instead of green which would lighten materially. However, I prefer the heavier, as I think it holds the trap more firmly in place, thus requiring less fastening. Small wire is best to fasten the trap to the crotch as mice and squirrels will cut twine.
While I feel that the Stop Thief will never begin to equal any steel jaw trap, I think there are times when it may be used to advantage, and I expect to try mine again the coming season and expect to do better with them than last season. ”

“ What the main spring is to a watch, a trap spring is to a trap, and unless the spring is made of a properly compounded steel and is of the right form and proportion and correctly tempered it will surely fail and make the whole trap worse than useless. ”

“ Steel traps are generally employed by the professional, as they are less cumbersome and quicker to set than the home-made affairs. The traps are handled with gloves, as the touch of the bare hands would be instantly detected by the wary animals, and, after being placed in a circle around the bait, are covered over with leaves and brush. In order not to leave human footprints behind him, the trapper often sets them while mounted upon horseback. ”

“ They seem to give the animal a fairer show; they develop our own constructive faculties; and the nearer we can get to the savage way the more fun it always is. Steel traps have a place that wooden traps can never fill ”

“ Of late years they have become cheaper, owing to the increased facilities of those great trap manufacturers, the Oneida Community, who are always looking to trappers' interest by adding new and improved methods of manufacture as well as new traps to the extensive line already manufactured so that now their use has become general ”

“ Now boys, I have given a few of my ideas as to traps, and if any of you have any suggestions to make as to improvements on the animal steel traps, let us hear from you through the columns of the H-T-T. I believe that manufacturers of animal or game traps would be glad to make any improvements on their traps could they be convinced that the suggested improvements were really of any value. ”

“ The business proved prosperous and it was found necessary to enlarge the plant from time to time in order to increase the output and supply the demand which was increasing rapidly as the traps became well known, and today these people are the largest manufacturers of steel traps in the world.
Great care is used in the tempering of the springs and it is a fact well known to the users of this goods that the Newhouse spring is more reliable and more durable than any other. ”

“ There may be miles of underground pipes bringing gas for fuel. Amid these scenes flit strong men, naked to the waist, unharmed in the red pandemonium, guiding every process, superintending every result; like other men, yet leading a life so strange that it is apparently impossible. The glowing rivers they escape; corruscating showers of flying white-hot metal do not fall upon them; the leaping, roaring, hungry, annihilating flames do not touch them; the gurgling streams of melted steel are their familiar playthings; yet they are but men. ”

“ As children we watched the blacksmith at his anvil, attracted and yet half-terrified by the spark-showers flying from a white-hot horseshoe. And even the adult, long used to startling sights, might well be fascinated and dismayed by the terrific blows dealt on glowing ingots by the mechanical sledge.
A steam hammer at work in Woolwich Arsenal, forging a steel ingot for the inner tube of a big gun. It delivers a blow equivalent to the momentum of a falling mass weighing 4000 tons. ”

“ To prevent safes from being opened by the drilling of one or two small holes in such positions as to destroy the security of the lock itself, advantage was taken of the improvements in the manufacture of high carbon steel, and even in what is to-day called the “fire-proof” safe a plate of steel which offers considerable resistance to drilling is placed between the outer door plate and the lock. ”

“ Then, remembering the old vault-keeper’s remark, “It doesn’t seem to take the heat right. Gets all sort of crumbly when it’s been heated,” he dashed for the forge, seized a pair of tongs, and drew the piece of metal from the fire. It slipped from the tongs and fell upon the cement floor with a dull thud.
In an agony of fear lest the steel had been ruined he seized a hammer and cold chisel and, placing the edge of the chisel against the still white-hot surface, struck it sharply with the hammer. ”

“ If there are any such fools let them try to imagine the feelings of the “mate” cowering and shivering over a scanty handful of wet wood or black-smoky dust “coal ration” who hears that coal miners at home threaten a strike; [xi] of the man crouched in a battered trench that is being blasted to bits by German steel shells from steel guns, who learns that our steel-makers are “out” and if their demands were not satisfied would continue to strike indefinitely and hold up the making of the guns and shells which alone can protect us ”

“ But metal refuse, scraps of iron, old boiler plates, under his magic touch, are also turned into the most useful things. For instance, the steam hammer used in the government workshop is rigged on steel columns from the debris of an engine room of a wrecked vessel. The hammer is the crank of a disused shaft of a cotton machine, the anvil is from an old "monkey," that drove the piles for the Suakim landing stage in 1884; the two cylinders are from an effete ice machine, and the steam and exhaust pipes come from a useless locomotive of the old railway. ”

“ A single charge of dynamite would certainly make a breach in concrete upon which a thief might hammer and chip day and night for a month without making much impression. Steel doors must give to blasting force, while the strongest and most complicated locks would also fly to pieces. ”

“ If it be desired to make drill-wire for drills, punches, graving-tools, etc., this plan will not answer, because under the removable scale there is left a thin film of decarbonized iron which cannot be pickled off without ruining the steel, and which will not harden. It is plain that this soft surface must be ruinous to steel intended for cutting-tools, for it prevents the extreme edge from hardening—the very place that must be hard if cutting is to be done. ”

“ No combination of metals ever yet before tried since the birth of gunnery, can equal it, either in density, ductility, or tenacity. A laminated steel barrel has never been known to burst. “Reputed” laminated steel barrels have been burst, but no real one ever. Nor is it probable, save from malconstruction. Through inattention in the welding the best of metal may be burnt; but the better the iron, the greater the difficulty. Steel is more liable to melt than burn; so that, with care and skill on the part of the workman, it will very seldom indeed occur. ”