Making your own equipment

[yorky]

I was recently speaking to a youngster who was very keen to start making a collection but as he needed around £250 for equipment he had shelved the idea. I know that we now live in different times but I explained to him that as an impoverished teenager I made my own net, setting boards, setting needles, breeding cages and used my mothers grease proofed paper as setting strips, killing jar using a jam jar and crushed laurel leaves from my grandads bush, the only thing I bought was insect pins. 

The very thought seemed alien to him but I always thought, and still do that you can start collecting for next to no financial outlay at all. My moth light was our conservatory fluorescent light which yielded many common species of moth and after just 2 years I had caught all the species of butterfly in my area, about 22 species and about 70 moth species.

Anyone else start this way?

[Paul K]

I was 12 and I made my spreading board out of wood scrubs, my father made a net from metal hanger, piece of old window covering drapes net, and handle from old toy.
After storing some specimens in plastic box we did first display case from scrub of wood, glass taken from old painting and pining bottom made of styrofoam covered with white paper.
I didn’t have proper pins for first few years as there was no where to buy or order in communism Poland. I used sawing pins with cut off heads.


Did I mentioned that I too used empty jam jars as a killing jars?

[kevinkk]

Exactly, starting small helps with a little humility as well. 250 sterling for a beginner? That's a lot of dollars.
Making your own things is sometimes better anyway, I made my current case cabinets to fit the cases, and the location.
I've got a field box that fits my spreading boards, you can't buy that online.

[yorky]

I was lucky with cases because my father was a mining engineer at the local coal mine, he was friends with a joiner who made me cases for free, I still have them, beautifully made.

[58chevy]

When I was a young boy, I made my own nets using a broom handle and a wire coat hanger for the hoop. My mother sewed the nets with nylon mesh or cheesecloth. I made spreading boards from balsa (which was cheap in those days). To store my collection, my grandfather gave me some large cardboard boxes that were used to store court records. I covered the bottoms of the boxes in cotton. They were not airtight but he also provided me with DDT to keep the pests out. He also made me some cyanide killing jars, but I was afraid of them and switched to carbon tetrachloride. Insect pins were 60 cents for 100 pins, which I bought at a local museum. I can't imagine a less expensive hobby.

[yorky]

We had some spare bamboo canes that I used for a handle. The wire for the ring came from a fence at the local recreation park that I "borrowed " and some old net curtains from my mother for the bag. That net served me well for 5 years and caught hundreds of specimens.

[leptraps]

When I was in High School, some how or another I had a piece of a 35 Gallon Metal Barrel of Carbontetrachloride in the back of our garage. By the time I was married is was all gone. Next up. Potassium Cyanide.

[gaspipe]

All of us are now antiques . Making your own equipment? Please are you serious? It requires thought , ingenuity and work . These attributes are now more foreign than ever.

[yorky]

Maybe now because people have lost the art and that's the attitude especially with millenials who really don't have a clue. Skills of making do and mending have been lost along with ingenuity and yes hard work.Yes I am deadly serious,what a flippant remark, I can only guess with such an attitude you are used to everything being handed to you without any effort on your part,

[gaspipe]

Jan 31, 2021 13:54:50 GMT -8 yorky said:

Maybe now because people have lost the art and that's the attitude especially with millenials who really don't have a clue. Skills of making do and mending have been lost along with ingenuity and yes hard work.Yes I am deadly serious,what a flippant remark, I can only guess with such an attitude you are used to everything being handed to you without any effort on your part,

Kinda off the topic but today young people fix nothing and make even less . Think about it even 72 inch TV’s are tossed in the trash when they stop working ; not “cost effective “ to fix . Same young people who complain we older folks don’t think about the environment enough . A hole in a butterfly net ; mend it ; come on throw it away and buy a new one . Cynical yes but the truth hurts.

[yorky]

Doesn't hurt me in the slightest. The post was about how cheaply you can make a collection of specimens as a beginner with no money at all. You don't need any particular skill to make setting boards, a net, killing jars etc and very little money either.