Core77

We last wrote about inventor extraordinaire Matthias Wandel back in May, when his homemade rolling table saw stand caught our eye; Wandel has since updated his website with a list of all of the "insane contraptions" he's built over the years, and even better, has committed to posting weekly updates of new inventions.

To refresh your memory, Wandel's a guy who buys machinery and shop tools at flea markets and tag sales, and later converts them into practical, sometimes incredibly specific purposes; some of his devices are sure to drop the jaw of many a woodworker. If you like woodshop stuff click here to check out his joinery jigs, but be warned that you may get sucked in for the next hour.

Speaking of getting sucked in, for the layperson or non-shop-geek, one of his easier-to-understand contraptions is his simple Wasp-Sucking Machine. After finding a wasp's nest on his property, Wandel converted a blower he picked up a a surplus store into a pest-capturing device:

The box has a glass lid so you can see the status of the catch, and only bug screen for a 'filter' so there isn't much to resist the flow of air. A piece of metal or cardboard can be slid in a gap where the hose connects to seal off the box, and the box just sits on top of the intake spout for the blower, so it can easily be removed from the machine for purposes of showing off one's catch.

The catch above is from leaving the machine running for 9 hours straight while I went to work. The machine doesn't suck the wasps out of the nest, it just catches most of the wasps that come back from the field. Coming out of the nest, most of them are smart enough to crawl away from the suction before getting airborne, but coming back, they get sucked in on the landing approach.