Hesitate to use the phrase "home made" some folks homes have a shop and equipment that would rival a manufacturer. I trap near the ocean with plenty or salty marshes and ground that has a high salt residue. Aluminum is a blessing and a curse. the curse being cost. the blessing being that you can fabricate about anything you can dream up pretty easy with normal tools and a pop rivet tool. Once proven out you can take it to a welder that can do aluminum work. He can tack the corners and various spots to hold it together really well. Don't underestimate rivets, almost all commercial aircraft are held together with rivets! Plus with a die grinder you can do trial and error easily. The grinder will "erase" a rivet to remove it in seconds. Here are a couple photo's of my aluminum designs




So this is the first guilotine style I have made. A bit complex but works really well. The only struggle is wind. Wind can cause a false trigger with that big flat door catching the breeze. It's only happened twice, both times 20mph wind gusts so I think thats still a reasonable function.

Looks good for what it is. Beats anything I've made. Takes trail and error with anything. I"m sure there's a way to work around the wind problem.

Well I am just using the redneck method to solve this for now. I put a 2" dia stick leaning against the back of the door to prevent the wind wiggle of the door. Half the fun is figuring out the solution.

My angle door traps never trip from wind or any other non-triggered issue. But I wanted a taller shorter design for a specific application. This is the trigger lever design I Have been using for 30 years regardless if the trap is for Leopard Hyena or jackals or caracal cats. Works flawless with angle door. Same design struggles with the wind on a guillotine door. All the hardware is made of Stainless Steel. I think I could add a wing nut to that down trigger rod to adjust tension easy. The back of the trap is a removeable sliding door for easy access.

Nice work!

Very nice work still don't completely understand the trigger though.

This is the angle door version with a spring loaded locking bar and rear sliding door. Exact same trigger. This one has not been welded yet and I may not have it welded up. Its strong as a vault. Maybe because it's smaller. 32" x 12X14"

The door closes with very high force with that spring loaded lock bar. Enough tension on the door and trigger I can drive with it on set on my ATV and it will not spring, but a quail stepping on the trigger will fire it!

I have this need to box in the back of the trap where the trigger and bait is located. Probably a character flaw of mine. The Vervet monkeys always reach through and trip the triggers. So I have always built them this way. Now Living in America I still build them this way. It is a help with the Raccoons too. It also gives a bit of protection to the non target animals from the weather.

Trigger example:

Trigger rod going down is to Pan or trgger lever
Trigger rod on the right is going to the door latch
Center nut and bolt is the pivot point.

It's mechanically dificult to pull down on one rod and in on it's connecting rod. Friction or complex "lucky" allignement is a crap shoot.

With this pivot point you can pull down on one rod while pulling the other towards the back of the trap. The Nylock nuts can be adjusted to perfection for the effort to trip it. All those bits are Stainles Steel so rust won't be a factor with age.

One other comment the nut and bolt under the trigger is simple to prevent it from spinning around. Captured animals especially vervet monkeys and honey badgers will destroy your trigger mechanism or anything that seems loose and dangly when they are inside for a while. They will chew and bend or twist and pull apart everything they can with super levels of determination and strength.

The triggers must be inside up under the angle iron side corners to prevent them from getting tripped from the outside. So I use 1/4-20 stainless rod I think it's 1/4" dia by imperial measure Probably similiar to 7mm? They cannot break or bend this (yet) but they do manage to twist it up on occasion. I have run the trigger rod lenght of the trap to the door in 3/4" electrical conduit so they cannot bugger it up on me.

Doesn't the salt/brackish water eat them up?

No problems so far in decades of use. This was the reason I moved to Aluminum and SS hardware.

I tried having commercial traps powder coated, many animals especially it seemed to me raccoons and honey badgers, chew them enough to expose the metal. Or just bend them into an unusable failure. At a minumum they were rusting badly in those areas. especially the welded joints of the 1" mesh fabric. I also had one sprayed with bed liner, that was a bad failure because it seemed to allow salt water to get between the liner and the metal. Finally I chose to built this Aluminum design with 7075 alloy. After full assembly and testing it is wiped down with acetone dried and coated with of all things a rattle can application of rustoleum cold galvanised grey primer paint. After which my wife seemed to think a camo pattern with Krylon rattle can camo paint colours was a fun idea.

An interesting coincidence of this was using the aluminum expanded metal as the mesh. It never occured to me that anmals cannot chew this shape of mesh. I have never had any of this pattern of mesh destroyed or chewed up. At least not as much as I have experienced with the more common 1" square steel mesh. I'm sure they work on it during their stay, but it seems they just give up and fight the door they came through for the most part. I used Stainless steel 3/16" door lock rods. Those were bent and damaged frequently. They were easy for me to bend into the shape I needed though. I soon discovered that 1/4" rod was never damaged and always secure without ever any risk of bending or breaking. However much more difficult to manage a perfectly shaped and bent design by hand. At least with simple home owner tools and fabrication equipment.

The solution for this was to keep one perfect rod as a template or model. Then with a Propane torch and a vice I could heat the area to be bent and shape it perfectly before the bend was made. This way I could make pretty close symetrical duplicates.

Nevertheless, the corrosion has not been an issue doing this. I also rinse them in freshwater all the time so they do not sit in storage while coated in salty residue.

I have taken a close look at using aluminum and stainless steel in the manufacturing in the cage traps . I always come to realize that it creates limitations. Not just in cost but of manufacturing but in the ability of the trap to function. It just seemed that the other traps that were specially designed could just out do A trap made mostly of stainless steel or aluminum. The ability to catch and the Versatility of the trap is most important to this forum.

Cost to manufactuer would probably be tripple the expense maybe even more! Ability to function Nothing I can see any difference with.

Fortunately I had access at one time to cut offs and shorts from an aluminum Manufacturing plant. Not every piece i needed was available. However those few extra pieces I needed in the big picture were nothing to worry about cost wise. Building them was an entertaining challenge and the cost was pennies. I just wanted the best most long lasting durable prison like structure that fired and locked shut everytime with no chance of escape on the side or upside down and was never accidentally tripped and empty.

Thats a tall order which I constantly rethink and figit with. I have one base design that can do this 100%, but I don't like that the entry losses an inch or a bit more with the folded door so I must build the whole trap bigger to accomadate the folded door. I have built the guillotine doors which give me the whole entry and length. Those door designs are often a struggle in high wind, snowfall and hiding them in the bush. I have some additional ideas rolling around in my head right now, one will guaranteed work but the additional design issues make the construction quite an engineering project. Plus I will eventually run out of my stock pile of 1/8" expanded aluminum so I need to think these through and not waste my materials!

Hi there JJ, are you the same JJHack that posted on T/C Contender groups several years ago?

JJHack, did you mean to say "honey badgers" above? Saw you were in WA assumed you either meant badger, or that you've used these overseas?

Yes I moved here from South Africa
I was a wildlife manager and owned a safari tourism and hunting business

Never know what decides to wander into the box huh! Young turkeys two days in a row!

All took flight when the door opened even the very small one could fly quite well!

Welcome aboard

Now make some homemade out of sight mole traps and you will make alot of money fast

Trigger looks like Mercer's
Spring powered door sounds like a DeKalb
Poster too long for me to read