About four, maybe five, years ago I thought up the idea of using a mousetrap as the main part of a remote ignition system for lighting ‘experimental’ fireworks and such. The idea was to attach a match to the mouse trap’s lever and have a matchbox striker pad suspended above. When the mousetrap was triggered the lever will fling closed, which will strike the match on the striker pad, which will light the match, which will light the fireworks fuse. I built one of these when I thought of the idea and used it multiple times successfully. I guess the original one I built has been destroyed or lost because I have no idea where it could be. I thought it’d be fun to build one again and I thought I’d show y’all it. So the other night I built one……..
To start, I cut a piece of brass tubing to about ~2.75″ and attached it to the side of the mouse trap lever using thread and superglue. A match will eventually go into this brass tubing. Then, using screws, I attached the mousetrap to a 1/4″ plywood base. When I attached the mousetrap to the base, I made it that the brass tube was roughly in the center. Then I built a stand that the striker pad will attach to.
The wood stand is made from a piece of wooden dowel screwed to the plywood from the underneath of the base and a piece of wood screwed into the top of the wood dowel. I measured that with a match in the brass tube, when the mousetrap’s lever is vertical, the height from the top of the ply wood to the top if the match head is 3.25″ so I cut my wooden dowel to 3.375″. The next piece I worked on was the striker pad.
I cut the striker pad off of a large box of matches. To make the striker pad stronger, I put two layers of box tape on the back of the striker pad. Also, I later realized that when the match was lit, it would burn the striker pad so I had to make an adjustment. What I did was I removed just one layer of cardboard from the last inch of the striker pad. I then put some tinfoil there (attached with double sided tape) so the flame couldn’t burn anything. Also down on the end with the tinfoil, I attached, on the back, a short piece of popsicle stick. This is to attach the rubber bands to……
To attach the striker pad to the assembly, I used some foam mounting tape to attach one end to the wooden stand, and on the other end I used rubberbands. To attach the rubber bands, I screwed two woodscrews into the plywood at the front. I then hooked a rubber band to a woodscrew, and then I attached the other end of the band to the Popsicle stick on the end of the striker pad. I did this same process for the other rubberband. The rubber bands provide some resistance to the match head and springiness so it isn’t too rough.
At this point, the remote igniter assembly works fine, but I made a few adjustments anyway. I didn’t like using the original mousetrap’s latch, so I made a new one. I took off the latch arm and screwed in an eye-screw on either side of the lever (when it is pulled back). Then to latch the rig, I pull back on the mousetrap lever, and stick the latch arm through an eye-screw, over the lever, and through the other eye-screw To trigger the igniter, I just yank on the pin real fast. The other thing I added was a aligator clip where the match lands. This clip is to hold the fuse of whatever I am trying to light.
Now, I really enjoyed building this and it is fun to play with, but it is not the most practical. It doesn’t really work outside in the wind, it doesn’t light all the time, and I’ve had problems with matches breaking. So, I encourage you to build one for fun, but I wouldn’t recommend this to put on a fireworks show 😛
