# Pest control in the Machine Shop



## Brian Rupnow (Sep 24, 2016)

This topic came up on another forum which I follow, and I had to tell a rather amusing true story from "back in the day".
Back in the day, (beginning in 1965), I was an apprentice draftsman at a big company in Belleville, Ontario. We had about 600 people at the time, and an immense machine shop/steel shop, and assembly shop. All machining was done on manual machines, and so to avoid shutting down the big lathes and shapers at "noon-hour" the machinists were allowed to bring their lunch from home and eat it at their machines. This lead to a rodent problem, and the machine shops were over-ran by mice. To solve the mouse problem, it was decided to bring in a small group of cats, (strange as it may sound). The cats cleaned up the mouse problem, but within a year the plant was over-ran by cats.--All the structural steel and platework that was stored outside got very rusty (we were right on the north shore of Lake Ontario) so when the steel was brought in from the storage yard, it was ran thru a giant shot blasting machine called a Wheelabrator" to clean it up. we began having problems with the wheelabrator, and it was found that all of the attendant cats were pooping in the Wheelabrator shot-blast reservoir, and the cat poop was plugging the nozzles of the Wheelabrator. Then the company hired an "animal control specialist" to come in and trap and dispose of all the cats. This worked fine, but for many months afterwards, there was a terrible flea problem. I'm not making this up, so help me God!!! My boss was a Dutch fellow who was allergic to fleas, and since it was quite common for the design office to send revised blueprints out to the shop office, Ab would tuck his pantlegs into his socks before entering the shop, to keep the fleas from jumping up his pantlegs and biting his ankles. The fleas either didn't bite me, or else they bit me and I had no reaction to it, so for about 6 months I was the one elected to run revised blueprints out to the shop office!!


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## chucketn (Sep 24, 2016)

My shop pest is fruit flies and gnats. I have a small(8'x18") shop on the back of my garage. It has air conditioning for summer , and a propane heater for winter. It has become my second home. I have a large screen TV and a computer along with my lathe and mill. As I smoke, and Herself suffers from COPD, I go there to smoke. Anyhow, don't know why there are so many, but the fruit flies and gnats abound. I very seldom eat there, so food is not the attractant. In the evening, I do carry my Bourbon and Coke there to sip, while watching the news and having a smoke before supper. 
The gnats and fruit flies drive me nuts, especially when they get in my face and land on my nose. I get great sport using my 'electronic flyswatter' to zap them. Though I have more success when they get trapped in the condensation on my B&C glass. I've tried trapping them with vinegar and dish soap. 
Before I built the shop, I used the garage in the warmer weather. One warm fall afternoon, I was cutting metal for a project when in quiet periods, I could hear a sound like someone grabbing a handful of cereal or such like from a cardboard box. I stood still trying to find the source. After several episodes of the sound, I caught a motion out of the corner of my eye. I focused on the spot and remained still for a moment. I spied a tiny mouse running across the garage near the bottom of the garage door. It ran across in front of the car, turned to run under the band saw, and stopped at the end of my workbench. It disappeared from sight followed by the scratching in the box sound. The sound stopped and the mouse reappeared. It retraced its path, back under the band saw, to the front of the car and across the door to the wall between the house and garage. I started looking around that end of the bench and found a box of Decon mouse bait I had put there. I followed the mouse's path around the car to the wall and found a quarter sized hole in the wall at the base board. 
I took up a position where I could see the bait and waited. Shure enough, the mouse soon reappeared at the bait, suck it's head in the box and made the scratching noise. It emerged with it's cheeks full, presumably of the bait, and again ran the path to the hole in the wall. I watched his for about 15 minutes, and the mouse made several trips...Finally it quit coming. I checked the bait and it was empty. I covered the hole in the wall, and have not seen or heard a mouse since.
Now how do I get rid of the damned fruit flies/gnats...

Chuck


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## bazmak (Sep 24, 2016)

Certain plants are toxic to some insects.Find out the best ones and put
a couple of pot plants in you shed.Will tidy the place up and keep your wife happy.Just remember to water


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## dnalot (Sep 24, 2016)

I have cieling rats. Bats to you. If I only had a flying cat. 

Mark T


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## Cogsy (Sep 25, 2016)

I only have spiders to worry about and they're not really a problem, I just have to be careful moving stuff that doesn't often get shifted in case they've taken up residence. However, if I leave the place shut up for a few months (as I'm having to now) they reclaim the place and it's tough to even walk in the door. Makes for a very careful few days while I 'relocate' the ones in my immediate workspace. Can be very exciting when you feel something tickling the back of your hand when you reach for something on the bench...


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## Naiveambition (Sep 26, 2016)

In south Texas the spiders aren't too bad as we have geckos or lizards for them so minus the occasional weird noise,  from lizard crawling around I can cope but..... Them $&@! palmettos make me sick to my core. 

For those that don't know, it's like a houseroach on steroids bout size of your thumb. And are fast with wings too...nasty looking things!

 So the solution is break out the BB gun and shoot em. Cause you'll never catch them, just wear safety googles from bb bouncing around. Tried sprays, etc nothing works. Oh and stepping on em causes a crunch that will bring up your dinner.:thumbup:


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## kylenlord (Sep 26, 2016)

At my work we have a fruit fly problem which is terrible because they are attracted to the wet paint and will land in the finished paint jobs. We make traps with apple cider vinegar and cardstock rolled into a funnel taped to the jars with a tiny hole in the bottom. 

Kyle


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## Herbiev (Sep 26, 2016)

Snakes is the biggest problem in my area. The brown snake is one of the most venomous in the world and they hide anywhere. A lady just South from here found one coilled up in her boot she was about to put on.


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## Cogsy (Sep 27, 2016)

Naiveambition said:


> Them $&@! palmettos make me sick to my core.


 
We have those here too - although they're simply known as 'American Cockroaches'. I have a similar level of disgust but there's no food in the shed so I rarely see them out there.


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## deverett (Sep 28, 2016)

chucketn said:


> My shop pest is fruit flies and gnats...
> 
> Chuck



Time flies like an arrow - fruit flies like a banana.  (Little boys' humour)

Dave
The Emerald Isle


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## Blogwitch (Sep 28, 2016)

I used to have a large spider living in the frame of my small brazing hearth.

Whenever I needed to use the hearth, I used to gently poke him out and it ran away. After the hearth was finished with, within a few hours it was back again in it's 'home'.

It must have resided there for well over a year, but long gone now. Maybe not enough flies about.

BTW, does anyone know how long house spiders live?

I have a large one (about 2"+ across) that lives somewhere in my living room, maybe under the sofa. When it is very quiet, you can actually hear it's very faint footsteps as it scrambles across the tiled floor. The dog has tried a few times to catch it, but the spider always wins.

John


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## goldstar31 (Sep 28, 2016)

Blogwitch said:


> BTW, does anyone know how long house spiders live?
> 
> 
> 
> John


 
Try the web!:hDe:

Norm


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## Blogwitch (Sep 28, 2016)

Goodness me Norman, that is awful.

But I did expect something like that from someone.

John


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## goldstar31 (Sep 28, 2016)

Blogwitch said:


> Goodness me Norman, that is awful.
> 
> But I did expect something like that from someone.
> 
> John


 
Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive
Actually it from Sir Walter Scott's poem Marmion and was written methinks in a farm called Langleeford on the Harthope Burn below Muckle Cheviot.

Thought a bit a culture might not come amiss!

Norman exiting to claim that 'He knew an Old Lady*********'


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## Hopper (Sep 28, 2016)

Biggest pests, literally, we get in sheds around here in the tropics are the pythons. But we usually leave them be because they eat the native giant -white-tail rats, which can cause some real damage by eating the insulation off wiring and other plastics left lying around. 

My mate up the road had a rat problem in his backyard machine shop so put a wire cage type trap up in the ceiling. Came in one day and could hear a rat running around in frantic circles in the cage so climbed up into the ceiling space on a ladder and came face-to-face with a very angry 12-15ft python who was not going to give up his prospective lunch to anybody. Was curled around the cage containing the poor rat and arched up ready to have a go at all comers. They are not venomous but still can give a nasty bite so mate backed off and came back another day after the snake had lost interest. 
It did explain why his backyard chickens had all disappeared too. 

I had an outbreak of large cockroaches too, they nested in the leather saddlebags of my WW2 Harley and ate all the smooth finish off the outside of teh bags over a two year period when I did not go in the shed due to a chronic health issue. The place was crawling with them, especially in any cardboard boxes used for storage and bundles of shop rags etc. Yuck. But a couple of those Mortein cockroach "bombs" that filled the shed with god knows what toxic mist sorted them right out.

And once the insect life was eliminated, the geckos (small lizards) went away and stopped crawling over the burglar alarm sensors and setting them off, so an added bonus!


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## nel2lar (Oct 2, 2016)

One of the best way to get rid of the flying insects is to not attract them. No Food and Drink in good containers. The crumbs and residue is what attract the flying ones.


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## Toolguy (Oct 4, 2016)

For fruit flies and gnats, I put out a bowl of Apple Cider Vinegar with some liquid dish soap. The soap breaks the surface tension so once they land, they are stuck and soon drown.

For flying insects I spray the windows with bug spray. The ones with Pyrethrin seem to be the fastest acting. By only doing the windows you limit the exposure of people and animals. This takes advantage of the fact that insects are drawn to any light source and tend to spend a lot of time there. You can also put it on lights that don't heat up like fluorescents for more effect or broader coverage.


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## Bentwings (Apr 13, 2022)

Brian Rupnow said:


> This topic came up on another forum which I follow, and I had to tell a rather amusing true story from "back in the day".
> Back in the day, (beginning in 1965), I was an apprentice draftsman at a big company in Belleville, Ontario. We had about 600 people at the time, and an immense machine shop/steel shop, and assembly shop. All machining was done on manual machines, and so to avoid shutting down the big lathes and shapers at "noon-hour" the machinists were allowed to bring their lunch from home and eat it at their machines. This lead to a rodent problem, and the machine shops were over-ran by mice. To solve the mouse problem, it was decided to bring in a small group of cats, (strange as it may sound). The cats cleaned up the mouse problem, but within a year the plant was over-ran by cats.--All the structural steel and platework that was stored outside got very rusty (we were right on the north shore of Lake Ontario) so when the steel was brought in from the storage yard, it was ran thru a giant shot blasting machine called a Wheelabrator" to clean it up. we began having problems with the wheelabrator, and it was found that all of the attendant cats were pooping in the Wheelabrator shot-blast reservoir, and the cat poop was plugging the nozzles of the Wheelabrator. Then the company hired an "animal control specialist" to come in and trap and dispose of all the cats. This worked fine, but for many months afterwards, there was a terrible flea problem. I'm not making this up, so help me God!!! My boss was a Dutch fellow who was allergic to fleas, and since it was quite common for the design office to send revised blueprints out to the shop office, Ab would tuck his pantlegs into his socks before entering the shop, to keep the fleas from jumping up his pantlegs and biting his ankles. The fleas either didn't bite me, or else they bit me and I had no reaction to it, so for about 6 months I was the one elected to run revised blueprints out to the shop office!!


I just had to post what happened in my home shop building big Rc warbirds.  Big model airplane 

It was early in the morning well after mid night. I had just finished sanding the fuselage of my giant scale Corsair . I leaned back on my chair admiring my work.
My 100 pound K9 German Shepherd was curled up on his shop bed watching me.  He guarded the shop, me the wife and kids as well as any officer trained to handle him.  Criminals and rodents were treated equally. L42 well cleaned teeth in a massive crushing device we
Ll capable of crushing a 2x 4.  Well I didn’t see his eye movement but he suddenly exploded of his bed putting a foot right through the nice fuselage , knocking me over as well as the shop table . He literally flew over me and banking off the garage door, he slammed into neatly stacked boxes and with out a bark or sound I heard a “snap” of bone crushing teeth . Then he backed out from the pile of boxes with something hanging out of his massive mouth. He walked over to me wagging his huge brush tail and dropped a dead mouse at my feet.  How can you be mad at your body guard for saving you from potential plague?  My kitty has saved me from crickets too. 

But it’s best to leave you animals in the hose . Getting metal chips out of feet and fur is not the most fun for all concerned . 

Byron


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## stevehuckss396 (Apr 13, 2022)

I find that the the easiest way to control pests in the shop is to take her out for a big meal and a few margaritas. When you get home she usually takes a nap and shop time is clear sailing.


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## SmithDoor (Apr 13, 2022)

I have not had a problem 
The neighborhood cat is on duty.
Bugs do not like cutting oil too. 

Dave


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## Bentwings (Apr 14, 2022)

stevehuckss396 said:


> I find that the the easiest way to control pests in the shop is to take her out for a big meal and a few margaritas. When you get home she usually takes a nap and shop time is clear sailing.


Haha that’s good .


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## Lloyd-ss (Apr 15, 2022)

Stink bugs.
When winter approaches they find the tiniest little cracks and crevices to crowd into. If all they did was just settle in for the winter and go to sleep, that wouldn't be too bad. But they like to hang out together and party and cause trouble.

A bunch of them were hanging out in this power supply until one of them backed into the high voltage and the lights went out.... right after his did.





And this guy thought he was faster than the electromagnetics in this 200 amp contactor. Hey guys, watch me put my head in and out real fast without it getting smashed.  The contactor needed a good cleaning to remove his mashed and burned head.


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## Steamchick (Apr 15, 2022)

I was at school with a lad who's Dad worked in a steel-works.... Over-run with rats, the way to keep their mess-room clear was some copper wire and 220V from the mains... One method was a saucer of water connected to "live" and a ring of copper wire 6" away from the saucer connected to Neutral. When a thirsty rat crawled up to the saucer he left his tail on the neutral - and ZAP! Dead bodies (from up to 20feet away!) were cleared away before the next meal break! Another was a live wet rag on some polythene, where they had steel floors... again so the rats' tails were Neutral when their noses/tongues reached the wet "live" and they became dead shorts. One guy used to take a few dead rats home each shift to feed his dogs... Saved him buying tinned food! (Apparently).
K2


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## ShopShoe (Apr 15, 2022)

I heard this one many years ago....

A few guys were trying to get their small manufacturing business started and had to take whatever they could find for facilities. The drafting department was in an old quonset hut overrun with rats and the guys kept pellet guns at their desks to take potshots at the rats as they worked. I guess there was probably a large "knock before entering" sign outside the entrance door.

--ShopShoe


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## WisJim (Apr 15, 2022)

We had a light switch in our old farmhouse that somehow attracted mice.  They would crawl up the wall, squeeze into the fiberglass switch box, and then short themselves across the wires.  I had cleared mice out of that same box 4 or 5 times over the years.  One time there were 2 electrocuted mice in the switch box.  Another time, I came into that room early in the morning, before daylight, and the ceiling light that this switch controlled was on, but was dim.  I went to flip the switch and the light got bright.  The mouse this time was across the switch terminals and provided a high resistance dimmer circuit when the switch was off.  And then there was the time that I caught a mouse in 2 traps.  The mouse had a rear foot in one trap, dragged it across the floor to another trap, which caught the mouse's head.


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## ignator (Apr 15, 2022)

Does anyone have a solution for Box Elder beetles? They collect on warm surfaces then crawl in when the door is open in the fall. Then there's paper wasps, that find a winter home, just hope you don't grab something they are on.


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## ChazzC (Apr 16, 2022)

ignator said:


> Does anyone have a solution for Box Elder beetles? They collect on warm surfaces then crawl in when the door is open in the fall. Then there's paper wasps, that find a winter home, just hope you don't grab something they are on.



You can spray Box Edler Bettles, but the only way to rid them permanently is to find the grove/stand of Box Elder trees and cut them down. 20+ years ago I worked with a client and one of their building's outside South wall was covered with the little buggers. The pest control guy said they feed on the trees, then look for light colored surfaces to hang out on; he looked around and sure enough, there was a stand of 3 or 4 trees about a half mile away, with nothing between us. The treatment worked for the rest of the season, but they came back each Spring until the trees were cut down during road work.


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## ChazzC (Apr 16, 2022)

Lloyd-ss said:


> Stink bugs.
> When winter approaches they find the tiniest little cracks and crevices to crowd into. If all they did was just settle in for the winter and go to sleep, that wouldn't be too bad. But they like to hang out together and party and cause trouble.
> 
> A bunch of them were hanging out in this power supply until one of them backed into the high voltage and the lights went out.... right after his did.
> ...



I keep vacuum bug catchers on each floor to suck them up and dispose of them outside - you don't want to touch them or squash them! The numbers of them decreased when I put up a bug collector under the deck (UV bulb and collection basket), and really went down when we covered scraggly woodland to grass, but maybe the Spotted Lantern Flies are eating them


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