Fly Fishing Forum banner

Fly Tying Work Areas

5K views 16 replies 10 participants last post by  Penguin 
#1 ·
Below is a link to vendor of fly tying furniture, looks very pricey and with low storage space. However, very high quality wood furniture from the pictures.

Doubt if this could hold very much, have 22 years of fly tying materials to store, don't think this is the solution for me.

Any body got any great solutions for a work area and storing of all the tying supplies one accumulates over time. Right now I have them stored in different tackle and plastic boxes, plastic bags etc in a number of different areas of the house and garage.

Think the wife is running out of patience and I cannot find things easily any more. :hehe:

Help :D :D


http://www.flytyingfurniture.com/
 
#2 ·
STORAGE

I know one thing that I have found out. You need to put in some moth balls in with you feathers if you don't use them alot. I have several of my goose feathers that I don't use often, and they have gotten eaten up by small mites. I found out the hard way to put in some moth balls to keep them out. Works great! Have several plastic containers and tool boxes with a couple of big drawers full of feathers and supplies...
 
#3 ·
Tying Area

My wife also decreed in Dec that my area for tying and computor station was beyond anyones idea of organized mayhem. The solution it appears was to Have some unfinished pine tables and hutch built to fit the area that I call mine. This is an area of approx 8by 10 FT. small room. This is going tripple my hidden storage area and make things easier to find???

This solution was realtively inexpensive fix other than the time involved in finishing and re-painting. Furniture finished now and starting on the room. This is the biggest job as you have to moove everything and you have lurkers advising that you dont need that what are you keeping that for.

Lots of Luck saltRon
 
#4 ·
I have two solutions. The first is a tying station at work ... shhh! As a high school teacher I get a prep period. It is in a large closet into which I have a small table and chair, a gooseneck lamp, a small garbage can, as well as a couple of shelves on the back wall. It is a sweet set-up. While I would never dream of tying during work time, I do regularly tie on my preps. After whatever prep work is done I can get 2 or 3 flies tied. Doing this a couple of times a week can really keep the fly-box well stocked. My wife also works at the same school and is notoriously slow in leaving, it used to drive me crazy - not now - I can tie a couple of flies while I wait. Needless to say, this virtually eliminates the need for a messy (or otherwise) tying station at home!

To facilitate the tying away from home I maintain an "in season" kit of materials I will be using and keep that at school. Most of which I can cram into a gym-type bag if I need to take it home or on a trip. The rest of my materials goes in a really cool plastic cabinet. I got it for Christmas a couple of years ago and it is great. It is a plastic shop storage cabinet that is about 4' high and maybe 18"x18". It has 5 large drawers and sits on casters. When I go on extended trips in the trailer, it goes along - it fits easily into a nook in the trailer and travels without probem. It is large, light, clean and mobile - and its pretty cheap. I have seen them at Home Depot and other similar places. I am considering a second one but the overflow is not quite at critical mass yet!
 
#5 ·
Couple soluctions

There are a couuple solutions. My fiirst recomendation is a roltop desk if you have the room. I have a large rolltop tha has so much room I actualy have room to fil up with supplies LOL. Ii actually keep my fly rels in bags in one of the desk drawars with my fly boxes. Now, I keep a Plano 777 box for my portable kit. It's a paramedic box tha can hold a TON of fly tying stuff. I just throw in my goods and go.

Now, you can get by with a rubbermade and put your goods iin ziplocks. Stash it somewhere, a closet andget when you need. By a portable bench for about $50-$70 an off you go.

Now, any of you who live in the Pacific Northwest, mainly WA area. I do hae my old fold down front desk. It's smaller desk I used for flytying (it was also my study desk in gradeschol/colege.Once I got my roltop desk it's ben sitting stagnant. If anybody is interested, I'd sel it for $30. It's not a fancy dancy desk, but has rom for suplis,a d an area t tie flies.
 
#6 ·
Thanks, keep the ideas coming.

Tying at work for me is not an option, with a corner office and windows on all sides except one, would not look good in an international financial services company modern office building.

I am envious though :hehe: :hehe:

Had some stuff stored in cabinets in the garage, little critter field mouse I suppose must have decided he liked some of my old bucktails and just ate them to the bone. Oh well it was old stuff I had not used in years. I am thinking about getting some more of those large plastic storage boxes you see construction workers use and college students in their rooms. Organize all materials by type of flies you tie trout naturals, steelhead naturals and flourescents and then just pull out what you need to ty the types you are going to do that day.

If any one has figured out how to tie more than one fly at once I want to know about it.

:smokin: :smokin:
 
#8 ·
Rubbermaid Products

Rubbermaid Products have several compartment type things that are cheap and easy to see into, so you can organize what you need. Shopco Costco KMart Sams Club any of these will have some neat things to pick up, and they store well under the desk of in a closet!:cool:
 
#9 ·
...A seriously ingenious friend took a commercially available cabinet (hangup space on top with doors and two drawers on the bottom) and he worked wonders with additions/mods.
He did a slide out "desk" with heavy duty hardware/rollers for a working surface...hung slide out boxes on the sides...used hook velcro where ever he had room (like on the inside of doors) and placed small velcro hook patches on material zip lock bags so they hang where placed...put the unit on large caster wheels... put shelves inside the cabinet over the slide out working surface.
The final project looked sensational...alot of storage, wheels, etc.
He finished it off with a powerstrip on the back so he can use his halogen light, glue gun, epoxy turner, etc.
 
#10 ·
I have a large chest of draws that I keep some of my flytying gear in, but I found that I can carry a good supply to just about anywhere, by altering one of those 6 drawer Mini Chest that Staples or Office Depot sell, I think now you can get them for about $20, I paid $30:( . What I did was take a 3/4 inch Composition Board, cut it large enough to hang over the edge by about 6 inches, to hold a clamp still flytying vice. drilled 4 holes one in each corner, down through the board, and through the chest top. I bolted the two together. I added a toolbox handle. I also put 2 small screw eyes, one on the top, and one just below the bottom drawer. I have a small rod that is bent at the top, and goes down through the screw eye at the bottom. This is to hold the drawers in when moving it. It is great to take to flytying places, as you can hold a lot of material in it, and it has wheels. :) It may seem to be a lot of work , but it really isn't.
 
#11 ·
artb,

That is the chest I use as well, except rather than run a rod through it (which I did consider) I just drilled a hole on the top and the bottom of the frame and hooked either end of a bungee cord into it.
 
#12 ·
I did it today.. Organization Feels Goods

Did it today, had to go to Office Depot for the wife (Real Estate Agent) could not find what she wanted, but looked at the plastic office drawers as described above. $ 25 on sale. I bought a couple of these for my college son last year, but never had the time to get myself organized. Last 4 winters have been hell out at work so not much fly tying or time for anything but work.

This year is different at least until February !!

Well consolidated everything by categories into the six drawers
and have another large 4 tray tackle box for everything else.

Found things I had forgotten about, probably saved myself $ 50 in not bying things I already had. Bad thing is now everything is consolidated into two places, the wife may be able to figure out how large the fly material investment is over the last 20 years. Before it was distributed in several locations garage and house.

Oh well its our 25th wedding anniversary this May so if this the event which ends it, so it shall be.

It feels good to be organized again for a low price tag. Maybe in the future I will go for the high cost stylish fly tying bench but for now I will save that money for the spey rod and spey lines I will be needing.

If you need a low cost solution check out these plastic file cabinets at your Office Supply stores should have.

:smokin: :smokin:
 
#13 ·
The wife noticed the new furniture

Yep, as I thought the wife has now noticed the new fly tying cabinet and is asking questions as to where all this stuff came from.

May have been better to keep it distributed through out the house and garage where she never knew how much there was.

Hope she understands :chuckle: :chuckle:
 
#14 · (Edited)
Don't know how I missed this one..

I have agreement from Ground-Control to make the undecorrated 4th bedroom my fly-tying / fishing theme room so the ideas above are all very helpful. I knew I was on to a good thing when she bought me a small hand vacuum cleaner for Christmas. :rolleyes:

Over the years I've acquired a huge assortment of plastic containers of varying types from the small to the rather large and still can't get stuff organized right - it's the old can-of-worms scenario played out for real.:eyecrazy:

I was thinking along the line of something like a mini-fly shop layout where everything is neatly displayed and organized on wall mounted brackets but that wont fly with G-C. I thought about a second mortgage and going the whole hog to buy a flyshop but that was a no-no too.:(

Penguins pal sounds like he's got it sussed! A bit of architectural wood-working on the doors and it would even look respectable:)
 
#15 ·
Yes I agree it is a problem, keeping order over the fly tying inventory, probably for me until one of my three sons moves out permanently to get an extra room all to myself.

Right now I have built up such a supply of material over the years that I should concentrate on using it up. But then when you walk in the fly shop or now shop on the net, the new stuff coming out is so tempting to not try on a new pattern.

Actually possibly fly tying is more fun and productive than fly fishing !! :cool:

Definitley warmer than the steelhead fishing weather we are faced with in the Midwest. :eek: :eek:
 
#16 ·
All right, here's my seceret:

Remember the Dewey Decimal System? Remember the card catalogues?

Those card catalogues make a great bench, millions of drawers, nice handles with matching label brackets. I just took a piece of MDF & screwed it to the 2 pull out shelves, with shims to account for play, and I have an organized, good looking, huge tying surface.

Of course there's still a mess of materials all over the desk top....:chuckle:
 
#17 ·
...Roopmeister...

...Don't the folks at the library get a bit annoyed when you sign out the furniture? And what sort of late fee are you looking at?
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top