Left over down?

[Whiskeyjack]

I finished my -50 quilt set, and there is still down in the bag. The bag itself is about 6' tall. I'd like to suck all the down out of the bag as well as all the bits stuck to the outside, but I'm unsure what the best option is to blow it into. I want something I can easily weigh to determine how much down I have left, as well as being easy to store and suck the down out of for the next project. Any ideas?

[vampiresmiley]

I trimmed down my bag, used a nylon inside a wet dry vac tube to clean off the outside and top of the bag as well as any extraneous down from the work area. I just fed the gathered down back into the bag, rolled the top and taped it closed. If you can cut off half the bag, you'll have a pretty good means of weighing the remainder, minus the weight of the bag.

Michael

[zooshooter]

I trimmed down my bag, used a nylon inside a wet dry vac tube to clean off the outside and top of the bag as well as any extraneous down from the work area. I just fed the gathered down back into the bag, rolled the top and taped it closed. If you can cut off half the bag, you'll have a pretty good means of weighing the remainder, minus the weight of the bag.

Michael

This is pretty much what I did as well. Bug netting instead of nylon, trimmed the bag, taped it closed. Works pretty well. To weigh it, I'd just use the same method I did for parcelling it into my quilt, which was to use a 13gal garbage can on a kitchen scale zeroed to cancel out the weight of the garbage can.

[Rain Man]

I used the "wet" method. Soaked the down in water mixed with a small amount of down wash (otherwise, the down will NOT get wet), and then it was easy to manage.

The whole "vacuum into a tube" technique did not work for me. It left lots of down behind and floating in the air.

As far as weighing, that can be solved various ways. For one, weigh the water you use first, then subtract. The net weight will be the down.

Rain Man

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[Whiskeyjack]

I built an eductor which works quite well for sucking down out of the package and I to something else. I just need to figure out what something else should be. I'd really like to get rid of the bag the down came in. Even cutting it in half it is way too big. I also can't suck it off the outside while blowing it into the bag. Would a pillow case work, or would the down leak out of it like crazy?