missouritrappersonline

Night Latching the Pan



When setting your traps you might find yourself trying to set it on a "Hair Trigger". This is sometimes hard to accomplish without a way of knowing exactly when the trap will fire. Nightlatching will solve this problem and give you a consistent hair trigger every time you set the trap. Nightlatching makes a trap fire faster, set easier and reduce pan travel. Pan travel is the amount of movement the pan has to make before the trap fires. Excessive pan travel will let the animal know that what he is standing on is moving,sometimes enough that the animal will pull his foot back out before the trap fires or even dig the trap out of it's bed.

You will need a small file called a needle file or pocket file. These come in many shapes. I find the best one for nightlatching is the half-round style. There are several different ways to nightlatch a trap. This is how I learned and found it to work good. First you must file the dog at a slight angle or perfectly square. Dogs that come from the factory are usually rounded a bit on the end. Now with the flat side of your file, file a very small step in the notch of the pan (where the dog goes) . Try to keep the step very small and at the edge of the notch. Don't file too much, remember you can always file more later but if you file off too much you can't go back. Please use the picture below as a reference.

Before the Nightlatch After the Nightlatch


Now you have what looks like stair steps in the notch of your pan. Take your file and file the end of the pan notch square so that when the dog comes out of the notch it doesn't roll off, it drops of a sharp edge causing the trap to fire crisp.You are ready to set the trap now. Set the trap just like normal but put the dog all the way in to the bottom of the pan notch. Once it is set take the loose jaw and turn it over on top of e fixed jaw to allow you to get in to the pan without fear of getting snapped. Hold a little bit of pressure on the springs with your fit for safety and lightly push the pan down to it's hair trigger notch in the pan. When it reaches this point you will hear a "click" this is the dog falling off the step you filed in the notch. At this point the trap should be on what you like as the hair trigger. f it is to hairy file the notch a little deeper towards the center of the trap. If it's not as touchy as you would like file the end of the notch to shorten up the step. After you are done you will know you have a consistent way of setting your traps on a hair trigger every time. This may seem hard to do but after you do this to a few traps it will get easier so try a few and see if you like it.

midmo....is this what the mb line of traps have on them....I ran a line last year with Paul Ellsworth and he used these traps and they made that same "click" noise....btw...those are awesome traps, easy to set and tough!

I'm not sure of the MB's if they had some that come out already with a night latch or not.. did you see the beaver trap I had made? I think Paul saw them at Arrow rock a couple years ago.. the jaws on it I casted here at the shop, man they were heavy but tough as hell. cast has a ton of compression strength as long as it's high enough carbon to become non maliable.

I made a pair of jaws here a couple weeks ago out of T-72 Billet aluminum for a # 4-1/2 Monty.. man talk about fast action..lol Little too expensive to be practical though..lol

Those MBs are sweet traps with heavy jaws....a lot better quality than the dukes I am used to. I don't know the first thing about all that "metal talk"...my roommate in college was big into all that and he made some cool stuff....but it always ended up weighing a ton...lol.

Steve the MB 550 come's with the dog it self actually notched for the night latch the MB 650 is a dogless trap but it has a night latch as well.

Bob nice graphic's and very well explained this is the kind of information we can use on here.

I personally hate doing mod's I don't even like to tune trap's that's why I choose to use the MB line very little tuning period. But I also understand not everyone is the same and that's what make's the world go round.

It is most definitely cheaper to modify them yourself...the mb's are expppppensiiiive.

Great Post MidMotrapper you will have to show me hoe to do those diagrams I just cant seam to pull it off in Paint program. you wil have to show me that 4 1/2 monty never see n one those