best way to store cattail fuzz? I'm basically going on a large hunt hitting every local place I know right now that has cat-tails and getting the spring seed shoots. what's the best way to store the fuzz? leaving the tails whole? or can I break the seeds up into their fluff, beat them, and store them in large plastic trash bags? I'm afraid of molding. I'm going to use the stuff as a jacket insulation and play with it a little bit in other sewing related stuff.
Fuck off
I'd think you're kind of a dick for causing a localized collapse of cattails around the most accessible part of a public river. Did you plant the cattails? You know that's how they make more cattails right, and they are not very successful individually, right?
I would expect there would be very little difference between cotton and cattail. Their seeds operate fairly similarly, it's going to be based on cellulose. You could just buy some cotton batting for $not much from a fabric store instead of trying to setup your own cattail-gin and carding station and I don't even know how you'd go on to make batting from cotton/cattail from scratch. That's also a fucking hell of a lot of cattail.
You probably have a sample of cattail already? wash it and smush it around a bit, because that's exactly what will happen in your jacket. How much volume do you have left of cattail? None? Now imagine how many fucking cattails you'll need so there will be a big enough matrix of it to actually support itself
>>990162
>>990167
why are there so much troll's on /diy/ lately.. who the fuck sent you here, actually better yet. why the fuck did you stay.
beating the cattail isn't to remove the seeds, its to break it up making it more fluffy.
cattail works on the same principle as goose down, compressible. yet creating those miniature pockets of air needed for insulation to work correctly. one shoot can effectively fill about four square inches of space. two square inches if you pack in in tightly.
Also where I'm collecting the cattail fuzz isn't going to collapse any natural sort of Eco-system. they're all retention ponds built because local roadways displaced water. the cat-tails are planted there to make the area look more pleasing and to keep the grass clippings where the county mows out of the water.
and trust me, Florida got plenty of cattail. I'm not going to make a dent in its population.
>>990167
This is a pretty bullshit post. As if collecting enough cattail fluff to fill a single fucking coat is going to hurt anything... That's ridiculous. And I'm sure OP already knows that they will need to gather a lot of it, since it will be so compressible. After all he is asking how to store it, which implies he knows it is more than a small amount.
As for answering the question, I'm not sure if cattails would have their own specific requirements but what I would do is minimize the moisture in the material, and then store it in an impermeable bag in a cool dry place.
I'd lay it out in the sun to dry out fully then put it in garbage bags and seal them, maybe spraying some kind of bug spray on it beforehand. It's likely though that any bugs would be killed just by sealing it up for a while, I know that's one method for getting rid of headlice contaminated stuff for example.
>>990153
>leaving the tails whole
If you're interested in long-term storage, yes. Harvest the trails whole and hit them with some hair spray (aerosol, not spritz) to keep them from fluffing of their own accord. Lay them out in the sun for a couple days to dry. Put them in a bag. When you're ready to use them, a twist of the tail will pop them open. They'll still fluff out pretty well. This is what I use for portable tinder.
>>990196
>trails
Dammit, I meant *tails. Fucking swype.
>>990196
>>990189
man this is some solid advice. thanks bros. just the kind of stuff I'm looking for.
though, I'm wondering if letting them dry out, not using the hairspray trick. is even worth it. here's my thoughts, as you can figure out by a simple google search, the Americans used cattail in the second world war for life vest. they soaked the fuzz in water for like something of 400 hours. and it showed no signs of sinking. dunno how this was test was conducted. makes me think though, maybe the fuzz is actually hydrophobic? apparently kapok fiber is, and they are suppose to be similar.
Don't get me wrong, I see the hairspray trick then throwing it in the sun as a way just to 'cure' 'dry' the hairspray quicker.
besides that, I figure drying them would be like anything you want to store in a container, excess moisture is just going to cause mold no matter what. if its best to store them un-fluffed. then I'm thinking instead of tying them in bundles and hanging them upside down in a dry location, just like how tobacco is set up for curing.
>>990259
If you just hang them to dry without the hair spray, they'll fluff of their own accord. The hair spray is simply a hard shell to prevent autofluff.
>>990291
yeah-no I got that, I'm just deciding "out loud" if I should container store, or open store them.
>>990174
>why are there so much troll's on /diy/ lately
its probably all of the people got fucked by the mod that bans legitimate users for stupid things, and then lets all of the cancer posts stay.
>>990465
Yeah, I've been banned from creating posts and don't even know what for.
Ohio got shit load of cattails in the ditches.
You could porbably just sundry them and toss in a dry paper bag.
