Normally when you want something about nature explained to you, you either look it up on Google or have someone like Sir David Attenborough narrate it to you in a soothing voice.
While Max Egorov from Advoko MAKES doesn’t speak the best English (he is a native Russian speaker), he goes the extra mile to explain how a normal, everyday tick sticks itself onto your skin. More importantly, he shows us the best way to remove it:
Being a victim of tick bites while working outdoors, Egorov has found that the easiest (and cheapest) way to remove ticks is by cutting a v-shaped wedge using a plastic bottle or credit card and driving it between the tick and your skin. Once the plastic is in place, all you have to do is lift up the tick by its chelicerae and hypostome and – BAM- no more itchy tick on your body!
Of course, cutting a piece of plastic isn’t a very interesting project per se, so Egorov goes even further beyond by creating a 1:40 scale model to demonstrate just how the plastic wedge completely removes all foreign tick elements from the skin.
Casting Aluminum Tick Model
Egorov sand casts molten aluminum into an empty eggshell to create the enlarged model of a tick’s body. Once the aluminum has solidified, he cracks open the eggshell and polishes the aluminum body.
He drills a hole on one end of the aluminum tick and fits a piece of rope through it. This rope will serve as the tick’s chelicerae and hypostome. These bits dig under your skin, causing itching, irritation, and worst of all, transmit dangerous diseases into your bloodstream. It should be noted the rope isn’t tied to the aluminum tick in any shape or form, but rather just slips into the hole (this will be important later during the demonstration).
Making Larger Wedge and the “Human” Skin
To mimic the wedge in the plastic card, Egorov cuts two pieces of plywood and drills them together to make them solid. He also drills a simple hole through a larger piece of wood to create an area in which the aluminum tick can penetrate the “skin”.
Let the Demonstration Begin!
With the rope fitted into the aluminum tick and through the hole, Egorov can now show us how his v-shaped plastic wedge works.
He starts off by pulling the tick by its body, which results in the rope getting left behind. Egorov explains this is much like removing a tick using your bare hands. While you might remove the visible parts of the tick outside your body, the chelicerae and hypostome underneath your skin are still very much there and causing untold trouble for your body.
Next, he uses the plywood wedge. Thanks to the large-scale model, we can clearly see how the wedge snags the rope underneath the tick, pulling it out alongside the rest of the tick’s body. With this method, you can completely remove the tick from your system and squash it under your shoes without fear of infection.
This is one of Max Egorov’s simpler creations. His YouTube channel showcases more of his larger outdoor builds like his log cabin, benches, and many, many workshop tools.
