Bass Bug,

Good luck, When I retired I considered putting together a data base and cataloging articles from my collection of angling magazines. I quickly gave it up as too much effort.

I've been tying and collecting materials for over 60 years ( fly tiers never throw anything away). About 20 years ago one of my friends (?) told my wife that I had more stuff than most fly shops. A few years into retirement I started working part time in a fly shop and since then my inventory has increased significantly. I once thought of doing a database like you are proposing and the idea lasted about a nano-second. I decided that it was much easier to keep my materials well organized. I have four oak cabinets with a total of 87 drawers, all labeled, for easy identification. Hooks are organized in a separate file for easy access. Surplus and bulky items such as bucktails rabbit skins and craft fur are stored in large boxes all labeled, and easy to access when needed.

Back to your database - the natural materials such as hair, furs and feathers would be rather straight forward because there is a limited number (although a large number) of different types. When you get into the synthetics - flash materials, misc body materials (braids, plastic ribbing, foam, tubing ....), synthetic wing materials etc etc; you would probably need to list by product name.

But back to your question as to how detailed the categorization needs to be depends on the information you want to access. In my mind I think of it as an organization chart and to be useful it needs to go as far down the chain as possible otherwise you are just recording generalizations.

For example - ( hope this makes sense)

Feathers

Chicken/Duck/ Pheasant...... (bird species)

Hackle/ Body/Quills (Feather type)
( From now on I'll expand on only the first item )


saddle/ neck/bulk (hackle type)

rooster/hen (sex)

dry/wet/salt (use)

natural/dyed (processed)

grizzly/brown/badger/ginger....... (colors)

10-12/12-14/14-16........ (size range, assuming each saddle will span two sizes)

1/2/3/4....... (quantity in stock)


Good luck and let us know how it works out.

Jim Cramer