Making The Trap Spring Knife

The trap spring knife is rugged, versatile, and simple. The only tools you will need are a grinder, files, a forge or a hot burning torch, and the trap spring. 

The first step is to take your trap spring ( which should be very large; a size #3 or bigger), heat it up and flatten it. 

Next you will need to anneal your metal to make grinding easier. To do this you heat it up to a dull red and let it cool on its own in a bed of ashes or in the dirt. After it is completely cool it is in its softest state. 

Now grind your shape and add the primary bevel. This could be done by using a belt sander, or hammer the edge as thin as possible, then file the rest of the way. before you harden it, the edge should be fairly thin. It will be much harder to work after hardening and tempering.

To make the metal hard enough to hold an edge, you will harden it.

With a pair of tongs grip your knife profile very firmly. Now heat it up with your torch or set it in your forge. Get it to a glowing red, and then dunk it quickly in a pot of oil. (One way to tell if it is ready to be quenched is to touch a magnet to it. if it is not magnetic you may quench it) You must quench in oil. It does not have to be a special kind, but water will crack the metal. Quenching makes the metal very hard.

To make sure your knife is hard, run a new file over the edge. If the file slides over it, it has been hardened successfully, but if the file catches it was not done right and you need to try again. Hardening makes the metal as hard and brittle as it can be. Be very careful and do not drop it in this state. 

Now you will need to remove some of that hardness to make it workable. Put the knife in your oven set at 400 degrees for two hours. It is now tempered.

With your grinder or files do the final grindings and sharpen it. One last tip: wire brush your knife instead of polishing it  You can add decorations to the handle like rawhide or paracord, or you can leave it how it is.

Good luck making knives, and happy New Year.

A finished knife and a profile, from one trap spring

--Caleb

RARE/COLLECTIBLE TRAPS

Believe it or not, there are some traps that are rare and collectible. In here I will include a little on two groups of these traps. One of these groups were called NEWHOUSE traps, and there were said to be the best traps in the world.They were made by a man named Sewell Newhouse who was born into the trade of blacksmithing in 1806. He forged his first trap when he was about 17 years old, and made them from then on. He would make them and sell them to the Indians he grew up with.  Pretty soon, they became famous for quality, and people would come from all over to get his famous traps. In 1805, after many years of making traps by hand, he started manufacturing them. They came in 25 different sizes, from gopher traps, to a bear trap weighing 42 pounds! The prices paid for these traps differ greatly, from $30, to $3,000.

The other group of traps was made by a man named Walter .A. Gibbs. He was a very inventive man, patenting over 16 different traps, most for muskrat. In 1913, he bought a marsh in Maryland for a duck hunting place, but he found that there were many muskrats in it, so he invented his own trap. It was called the Gibbs Two Trigger, and it had a kill bar that fired after the trap sprung, keeping the 'rat from twisting out. This was the first coil spring trap ever produced. He also produced a hawk trap, a "dope" trap (which when set off would bring a little capsule of poison for the animal to chew on), a "single grip" trap (which was a coilspring trap), and a "armadillo" style trap, which was like a cage trap that had a trap in side it. when the trap was tripped, the cage would close, then the trap would let go, and you could let the muskrat go elsewhere. The two trigger traps are worth from $20, to $250, the "dope" trap is worth $850 to $2500, the single grip traps are worth $10 to $90, and the "armadillo" style traps are worth about $2,000.    

If you like collecting, and you like traps, then you would like trap collecting. If you want to be a trap collector, then I would say do 2 things: get The Trap Collectors Guide by Tom Parr and Blaise Andreski, and become a member of the North American Trap Collectors Association (N.A.T.C.A). It is $25 a year, and you get great benefits, like a 1 year subscription to TRAPS, the current patch, and other great stuff.

Also, if you have any questions, then please contact me at: furtrader101@outlook.com.

Here are some other collectible trap brand names (and pics).

                  

triumph #1 -  3 jaw 

            

diamond 21

                   

Blake and lamb #2 wl teeth

Hawley and Norton

victor JUMP

Gibbs

Blake and lamb

Newhouse 

triumph

diamond (should have a diamond in the pan)

Sargent

Cooper

Kangaroo

PLEASE COMMENT AND SUBSCRIBE!!!!!

Thanks, Caleb

dog proof trapping, and how to kill a possum

Dog proof traps are a great way to get started, and all you will catch is raccoon and opossum, not any dogs. Setting them is simple, bait trap BEFORE setting (use tuna, small marshmallows, uncooked bacon, or they make a special DP bait called "truckload coon bait") find the place you want to set trap, like in a sand bank were you see coon tracks, and set trap. If you can’t set it with your hands, then some have special setters you can use. Push trap firmly into the ground,stake with a piece of re-bar and you are all set! (No pun intended) They are fast, easy, cheap and they work.You can get them at any of the trapping supply places mentioned in the MY FAVORITE BOOKS post. 

Last year, all I got in DPs was a possum but I did not get a picture of it. To let something go out of a dog proof, take a stick about 2’ long and put it on the animal’s neck, and with your foot pin the stick to the ground to keep the animal from biting you wile you let its foot out. Possum’s are nearly impossible to kill the normal way (shooting through the head) but shooting in the body through the lungs will kill them faster. I remember one time I had a possum in a cage trap, and to kill it I shot it with my pellet gun in the head 4 times (a dose which I killed a coon with once) and left it all night in 30 degree weather to bleed out, and the next morning he was still there, alive! My grandpa had to impale it twice to with a 1" thick iron pole kill it. That goes to say how hard they are to kill. They can also swim pretty good too, but in a cage trap you can drown them in about 5 minutes. Another way that I read that you can kill opossum is to knock it unconscious with a tap to the head, lay it on its stomach, and put a 2’ stick on their neck, stand on both ends, and jerk it sharply up by its tail, breaking its neck. That is really all I have, and I am sure that there are many other tricks, I just don’t know them, but you now know how to set a DP, good baits, and how to kill a possum.

Have fun,

Caleb

Some Of My Favorite Books

In this post, I figured that I would share the books that I got (or get) valuable information from.

I will write out a list and tell what they are by category, because there are a few that are just good reads. Here they are.

Books Just For Reading:

The Deer Pasture

Undaunted Courage, this is a book on the Lewis and Clark expedition, it has a lot of facts, 500 pages

Boy Scouts in a Trappers Camp, this one’s great, and any other by Burgess will be good too

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings

TRAPPING INFO BOOKS:

The Trap Collector’s Guide, this one by Parr and Andreski is a book I look through 3 times a day. It’s worth the price tag, and I like it even better because I met Tom Parr! (my favorite book).

Any books by S. Stanley Hawbaker have some of the best sets and information there is.

If you can find it, the Fur Trapper by Edward Phetteplace is good too.

Trapline 2000 by Hal Sullivan has some good modern information, and I have not read any of his other books, they should be good.

The Trapper’s Bible is an old book. It has great drawings, and advice from over 20 different trappers. However, some of it is hard or probably would not work.

MAGAZINES

American Frontiersman - this is a twice a year magazine that is worth all of the ten dollars it costs. There are articles on hunting, trapping, building, and a lot of other great stuff.

Backwoodsman - printed 6 times a year, this magazine is good for ideas of things to do, and it does interviews with some survival experts often.

Fur-Fish-Game one of the oldest best magazines ever printed, just go ahead and get a 17.99 subscription, its worth it. In it you will find trapping, hunting and fishing (hence the name), with articles by Tom Parr, and Hal Sullivan.

Trappers World owned by Tom Parr, this magazine stands right up there with FFG.

TRAPPING SUPPLY PLACES

www.thesnareshop.com  sells fishing stuff too!

www.minntrapprod.com  this website has trapping info, trapping supplys, and if you make a order over $50.00, you get a free gift!

www.rpoutdoors.com  a great place, it is where I ordered from for a long time.

These are the places I order from, there are more not listed and that is all for this post.

Have fun reading, Caleb

 please comment and subscribe!

Trapping Equipment

Welcome to the trap-line, the following will be on the equipment you will need.

First you will need the traps. So, longspring or coilspring?Well, longsprings are strong, durable, and good traps, but they are expensive, heavy and big too. Coilsprings are light, in-expensive and small, and they work just as good as longsprings. Conibears: are cheap, strong, and great for trail sets, but, they need a tool to set, can kill pets, and they are pretty big too. Snares: are light, affordable, and kill humanely, but they can be knocked over, and you really can't make a bait set. Cage traps: are great for starting trapping, they are easy to bait, and catch animals live, but, they are very heavy,cost a lot of money, and it's easy for animals to avoid the trap. one last trap, the dog-proof, this is a great, cheap, dog-proof trap that works well in all conditions. Bait these with small marshmallows, or canned tuna.

For making the set, you will need a sifter, a trowel, bait lure, stakes, and pan covers. wax paper is what i use for pan covers, and I also use Berkshire disposable stakes with 12" of cable attached.

After you trap and kill the animal, you will need to skin it.
So, you will need a skinning knife and a gambrel. 
After you skin it , you will need to flesh it. So, you will need a fleshing beam, and a 2 handled fleshing knife.
After you flesh the animal, you will need to dry it.
So, you will need a stretcher, for coon you will need a #4 
stretcher, for coyote a #5 will do. Then you will need to sell it.