I need your advice.

[mickporter]

I have been quite ill recently and have developed double pneumonia. (Which I would not recommend to anyone.) For about two years now I have had a permanent cough which my doctors could not treat apart from gallons of codine.

Now after this present illness I am having to face upto the possibilities that I may have alergies. I hope I am very wrong but the first thing I need to explore are the feathers and fur. I have masses of them. Most stored in plastic boxes, but very often of course scattered around my fly tying bench.

I am obviously not going to burn all or any of my collection but do want to store it away in my loft. I need to ensure its dry, bug free, as compact as possible, and recoverable as soon as I am declared feather or fur alergy free.

At the moment most of my collection is either in small plastic freezer type boxes, or in very large plastic storage bins with lids. My loft is small and my wife is not understanding (She would burn the lot tomorrow with half a motive!!) So I thought of those plastic vacuum storage bags that I have seen on tv. You can put clothes and bedding inside them, suck out the air with a vaccum cleaner and they go really thin and airtight! My Feathers are in ziplock bags so could go straight in without the vac sucking them up. My fur and skins should be ok as they are.

Would this treatment damage them? The manafactures say that clothes come out crease free. Oddly they dont mention feathers.

[hap]

Any "damage" done could be undone quickly by steaming...

[Uncle Jesse]

"The manafactures say that clothes come out crease free." Mike my friend, the manufacturers are selling bags, they are not planning on a lot of repeat customers. If you pull a vaccuum on a bag full of clothes there will be creases not there when you put them in the bag. The only damage I can see to tying supplies it that it would be compressed and over a period of time possibly lose "fullness" in some materials.

Good luck with the allergies, my son took shots weekly when he was a child.

[bowmaker1]

Well I would tell you to forget that Crease free pipe dream. I have some extra blankets and sheet stored in those vac bags in the camper to take up less space and they really work for that but are very wrinkled. For your stuff it might work if you didn't draw as deep a vacuum and maybe leave just a little air in the bags. I would be very careful of any necks or saddles that you would put in these bags because they might really get crushed. You might experiment with some of the bags and some stuff that isn't very important just to see how drawn up these bags can get.

[Sully]

I suggest you rent a storage locker near you!

Material cam be packed in boxes along with mothballs and put in the storage locker. They have some that are no larger ( about 4' x 4' ) than a closet. I have one here that is 10' X 10' and it costs me a little more than $650 for a year. The smaller ones are MUCH less than that!

[Betty Hiner]

mick,
There is a food packaging company (handi wrap?) that makes a vacuum bag for left over foods, and frozen foods. It has a little hand held "vacuum" to suck the air out of the bag. It's far less powerful than your standard Hoover, and probably would not do the damage to your materials. The top of the "baggies" zip open and closed.
In addition, if the allergies are severe, you may want to check in to the face masks to wear while you're tying.
Betty

[Soft-hackle]

This has nothing to do with your storage problem, but with your cough. I had a nagging cough. At night it would get so bad, I'd choke i coughed so hard. I discussed this with my doctor. He suggested I might be dehydrated. Solution--drink more WATER. I now make sure I get 64 oz of water every day. I start when I first get out of bed. I have a stainless steel water bottle that is with me constantly, and it holds 2 cups. Four refills gives me my quota. No more, no less. Of course I have my warm drink in the morning, perhaps one in the evening, but the 4 bottles of water still get downed. I stopped the coughing. What a relief, especially at night.

I'd at least consider the possibility you need more water.

Mark

[mickporter]

Thanks guys. I have done a sample to check the effects. I will see if it does work or not. I dont want to risk my collection.

[Al Beatty]

Hi Mick,

Gretchen and I have one of those vacumn storage bag machines for storing food in a freezer similar to what Betty suggested. I has worked well for us when we wanted to compress a bunch of marabou and fur-on-the-skin. It may work well for you as well.

I'm not a doctor nor do I play one on TV but if it's possible, you might consider a dryer climate if that's at all possible. By the way, the climate here in Boise, Idaho is close to perfect <G>. In any case, get well soon! Take care & ...

Tight Lines - Al Beatty
www.btsflyfishing.com

[narcodog]

Like Al I am not a doctor but I have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express so what you could do is put some cloves in the ziplock and suck some of the air out not all. You know just until the material starts to crush. Then when you take them out do as was pointed out earlier is to steam the items.