I gotta build a couple of these. I’ve been tying with a trash bag (paper grocery bag) between my feet to drop small clippings in. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve dropped tools, materials, hooks and even finished flies into that bag. When it’s a new bag it’s no big deal to retrieve the stuff, but when the bag has been there for a couple months. What a pain.
This trash trough will solve the problem. Great idea, great presentation.
VEE gets one for when she is spinning deer hair. Hopefully it will cut down on the deer hair bits that find their way all over the house.
I screwed three small eye hooks into the front edge of my tying bench, evenly spaced for a length of about 10", opened up the eyes a bit, and stuck a plastic grocery bag on the hooks. When you’re done or the bag starts to fill, just toss it. No muss or fuss, and you’re getting double duty out of the bags. Not as permanent as the trough however, but a fast and easy junk catcher.
Jim sent me a trash trough & I love it! I don’t even need to move it to empty it…just use a shop or hand held vac. It is just an outstanding tool.
Thanks Jim!!
Mike
Jims idea is pretty nice–I have a tying room with a large tying bench and I added a pull out drawer. Fill it up, close the drawer 0ut of site and no more mess. Every so often Ill vacum it out. BILL
While the trough idea is a good one, I use a small serving tray I got at the dollar store. I just push the scrap to the side of the tray away from where I’m working. When I’m done tying, or it gets too full, I just pick it up and dump it in the trash can
Great idea! I have another suggestion for those who don’t want to cut the end plugs. Just pick up a couple of end caps from where you purcased your pipe. It’s not as pretty but neither is my tying desk.
P.S. I use a couple of earth magnets on my vise stand to, manage hold or catch wayward hooks. It’s reduced the number that end up on the floor, in socks of on the sofa buy a huge margin. (vise spits not included)
Thank you for the kind words on my Trash Trough article. My intent was simply to share an idea that I have found works well for me. I find that trash collection/containment at the tying bench is a little like spaghetti sauce. There are a lot of different receipes out there, they all do pretty much the same thing and most of them won’t hurt you. Likewise, there are many good ideas and solutions to collecting trash at the bench and this particular tool (sauce) works well for me. We all face variations of the same problems/challenges at the bench and I’d love to see some of the creative solutions folks have come up with to solve them. Fly tyers by their very nature are very creative, hands- on problem solvers. I really enjoy the threads where people offer up their ideas and solutions so we can adapt and build on them to create new solutions.
As far as the folks that want to try buildng a trash trough, please feel free to contact me if you have any quesitons at all. If there’s someone out there that doesn’t have access to the tools etc. to build one, I do have an extra one sine I made up a batch of six for several of my fly tying friends.
Thanks again for the kind words and keep the good ideas coming.
I just wanted to say thanks for posting the article on the trash trough. I built one last weekend and I really like it.
Before I built the trash though, I was using a cigar box with an old bowl in it for trash. It worked but it was always in the way. Then I bought one of the trash bags that mounts to the vise stem. The stem mounted trash bag worked but it was also always in the way and it was a pain to empty. In both the cigar box – bowl and the stem mounted trash bag I was always dropping things into the trash and it was a pain to find whatever I dropped in the mess with all of the clippings.
After I built the thrash trough I also bought a small cutting board from Wally World and mounted a couple of magnets on it, a fly drying rack and a spring to hold wire and tinsel to keep them staged for tying. I put several coats of lacquer on the cutting board and then waxed it with a paste wax. The lacquer and paste wax makes the finish really slick so the way word clipping easily slide into the trough. I guess you would call the modified cutting board a tying board? It works really well.
I use a small cheap 2 inch paint bush (it’s called a chip brush) that I use to sweep clippings into the trough and clean the trough into the trash can. If anyone is interested the chip brush works great and is available at any paint store for a couple of bucks.
Thanks again for posting the article, the trash trough has really improved my tying station.
Since this thread is resurrected I’ll show you what I did…
Had a section of plastic gutter in the garage…cut to length
Drilled a couple of holes to match the hooks that were holding my existing trash bag…you know the wooden knitting circle kind…or whatever it’s called…
Mounted the gutter to the hooks …a done deal…
Didn’t bother to put in end caps…
Time spent…about 10 minutes
Cost = 0…since I had the gutter…which I had from mounting a long section of gutter to hold extra golf balls:rolleyes:
I’m not going to throw awy the trash bag…but I think this is going to work and do away with the annoyance as mentioned before of things dropping in the bag.
I figure I’ll use an old paint brush to sweep the debris out of the open end into the waste basket.
