WIP: Mouse and rat traps

• Thinking about Judy's advice to print on other surfaces;
• bringing back some elements of my (successful?) earlier work 'decisions' (re-imagining familiar objects, analogies, printing on wood);
• thinking about rodents / animals for testing / pests / genetic modification / ethics, I thought about looking at mouse traps
• I bought some traps and cut up some wood in a similar size/grain to the original base

Mouse and rat traps conventionally have a logo or image printed on the platform; usually red.

I think the form and size of the corn resembles that of a large rodent… it also sort of looks like an imprint, a blood stain.

Screen printing on wood:

Above: the first wood tests were sized to fit the entire image, although this looked a bit nonsensical with the wire contraption on it. Below: the wood and image cropped to the standard trap size.

A comparison:

Conventionally, these wooden traps are also varnished - I imagine this is so that any blood can be easily cleaned off. Initially I tried applying a layer of GAC 100 and self-levelling clear gel over the print. Unfortunately some of the detail/clarity was lost as a result, presumably be because it darkens the wood grain in between the halftone dots. Still trying to resolve this. The middle print below is varnished in this way, showing the difference:

I tried removing the wire and staples from a trap and re-using them on one of the printed blocks, as I couldn't find any staples of a similar size/colour in any of my local hardware stores. Unfortunately the staples buckled a lot when hammered back into the wood, and it is a challenge to get them positioned just right. In any case it pretty much worked, and here's the slightly wonky result of the first test: 

I also had some smaller mouse traps to experiment with. Corn and soy are two of the most genetically modified crops in the world, so for these I used my x rays of edamame beans. 

The importance of using ink retarder, illustrated:

Below: the middle one is printed directly on raw timber. For the print on the right, I used the GAC/gel medium underneath the print. This was great, until...

…I went to add the metal parts the next day, and it began rubbing off.

I talked to the wood technician Nick about the staples - he does not think I'll find any new ones in a size as small as required for these, they seem to be custom-made for the traps. The only option is transferring the metal contraptions and staples from the bought traps to the printed wood. How to do this? 'It depends how patient you are,' he said.
So now, for each staple, I need to re-shape the metal (which bends out of shape when extracted,) flatten it, and file both ends into sharp points before hammering into the new wood. Such a process - hopefully will be worth it.

The next tests will...
-use sealed timber and less ink retarder with longer drying time; see if this prevents any of the ink from rubbing off.
-use spray varnish over the print + see if this makes any difference in retaining the detail
-use green ink instead of red. I'm interested in the implications of the colour green (Green = go. Green = eco friendly, healthy, etc. Green = toxic.) and of course it is the natural colour of edamame beans. I imagine the resulting effect/message will be 'here is an inviting, seemingly healthy snack; but it's a trap.'