The Tidycat, $5 lobster and lionfish bag.

[Nathan Doty]

Howdy all, next up in my new hobby of building scuba gear from misc junk hanging out in my garage is the Tidycat! Since time traveling terminators have been stealing all my ideas and traveling back in time in order to put them on market before I think of them, I'm calling this the Tidycat! Tm, R, C, whatever. Let's see skynet beat that!

As always I have a self imposed limit of $10 on any of my stupid projects (stupid means your life doesn't depend on it. I personally think I'm pretty smart. And handsome. Pretty darn humble too.)

Anyway, here's where we start.

We've got:
1. Old kitty litter container (courtesy of my wife).
2. 6" PVC coupler (Lowes $6).
3. Scrap 1/2" PVC courtesy of my garage
4. Laundry bag ($2 at walmart courtesy of a project I bought it for and I don't remember why but I probably had a good reason!)
5. Scrap material (courtesy of the rag bag in my garage)
6. Not shown, misc screws, glue, velcro and some paracord.

This will take more than the 5 minutes of my last build. I probably have a couple hours in this not including dry time on glue and paint.

So gather materials and we're off!

But wait! you say. What are we building? Well, you clicked on the link so it's pretty darn obvious. Try to keep up. I mean really...

We'll jump to the end though since you're so impatient. Here's the end result.

But wait! you say again. You're calling this a $5 project, and yet I see you spent $8 in material! Ok, you're a bit smarter than I thought, you can do simple math. But I can make 2 of these with what I have, so it's only about $4 each. I win! YMMV of course, but there's no reason you can't scrounge the same bits and be no more out of pocket than I am.

ON TO THE BUILD!

Step 1: Split the coupler. I used my table saw but pvc is easy to work with without power tools. I just happen to have the tools and I"m pretty lazy. You should end up with 2 3 inch wide rings which will give you 2 tidycats. Or leave it alone, no reason to do this step if you only want 1 although it will be a bit bulkier. The ring will be the main body, 6" wide give or take a bit, should fit most bugs without too much trouble.

2. Make your handle. Cut off a piece of the scrap 1/2" pvc and boil it for a few minutes. That will make the pvc easy to form. I made it wide enough to fit my hand easy and long enough to have extra long legs. We'll trim them to length in a minute.

3. Make some holes in the body. I used a spade bit, which did not do a good job and needed some clean up work with a dremel. Live and learn, I'll do better on the next one. But use the handle you made to set the spacing. It's easier to make the holes fit the handle than to try and make the handle fit your holes.

4. Stick the handle in, find where it feels about right in your hand and mark the legs to cut to length.

5. Insert and glue. I used regular PVC glue followed by some JB weld to fill the gaps. Like I said, my holes sucked.

6. Make your flap. A jigsaw and the kitty litter container come into play here. Again, no measurements as I'm just winging this. But wide enough to fill the hole and longer than you think you need. It's ok if you short this and need to make a 2nd. I know I did. On the upside it helped me name my creation. Sand the rough edges left by the jigsaw.

Where we at... 7?

7. Glue and clamps.

8. I like a little redundancy. That is, I like backups on critical things. To be honest, I'll do something twice in case the 1st fails...

So screws from the flap and paracord for the handle in case the glue fails (it probably will).

That's a 10 image limit, stay tuned!

 

[Nathan Doty]

Tidycat part 2: The tidycatting...

9. Drill some more holes. Holes are good. I didn't measure these either, but about an inch from the edge and enough to do the job. That you'll see in a bit...

And that's about it for the main housing. Now we're on to the soft parts.

10. Split the laundry bag in half. Or don't up to you. But my purpose I cut it in half, removed the draw string to be used later. Open up the bottom seam just enough to fit around the main housing. Use some scrap material to reinforce all the seams and also create a pocket for the draw string. I didn't take photos of each step but what you want to end up with is this. You'll have an opening that fits snugly around the pvc housing, but also has a toggled drawstring on the other end. You'll be able to just open up the far end and dump out your entire catch with no zippers to fail. Plus if you use rainbow material it LOOKS FABULOUS!

11. Paint. Optional and self explanatory. I do not expect the paint to hold up, at all, but what the hell.

12. Attach the bag to the housing. I used paracord but you could do it pretty easy with velcro. Thread the cord through the material and the previously drilled holes. While I had my cord out I decided to wrap the handle as well. It doesn't really serve any function but it's been a while since I used it, might as well refresh the old muscle memory.

13. Optional here. Taking a bit more scrap pvc, cut out a spacer. Glue and screw them to the housing sandwiching some velcro. You end up with 2 snap in holders for your net and your tickle stick or lionfish spear.

And you're done. I'll likely be swapping out the smaller snap holder for the tickle stick. I'm going to be making an expanding one so the entire thing is more compact for being on the boat. But as she sits the tidycat can carry your entire rig in 1 hand and it's easy to snap everything in and out as needed. I have a fold out net from walmart. I like things compact and it unfolds to full size and 5 or 6 feet long. I had an idea to build one and decided to see what the store had. For the price, easier to buy than to build sometimes.

Using the 6" coupler and not permanently attaching the bag will let you remove the bag entirely and slide in a 6" length of PVC pipe (not shown obviously) for lionfish hunting. Just close off the end of the pipe with either mesh or a drilled for drainage PVC cap and this setup should pull double duty while only adding a couple bucks to the build.


It should work as well as the $35 option and didn't take long really. It should go even faster the next time around since I won't be making things up on the fly. And as an added bonus, everyone gets to see my toes in the last picture.

 

[johndiver999]

Cool idea. With respect to the flapper...What you should have done is cut the one piece from the bottom and the side. The 90 degree transition at the bottom/side transition is what you use for the bend in the flapper.

 

[Nathan Doty]

Ya, but going long and over the top keeps tension on the flapper so it stays closed. It's constantly pushing against the body. With a smooth transition vs a sharp bend it should be an almost infatiguable hinge. Sharp transitions are generally the first place to fail with use. It also let's me keep the round shape. If I cut the corner off the container I've got a straight bit that doesn't really connect as easily or as securely. I'd have to do spacers and that would kill the fast and easy build I'm after. I could mold and machine a commercial looking piece but I'm shooting for garage and hand tools that anyone has access to along with an almost $0 budget.

I had a more elaborate design in mind but scrapped it before I made my first cut. It was going against my goal :laugh: By the time I would have everything the way I was initially thinking, cheaper and easier to spend the $35 on amazon!

 

[Sam Miller III]

@Nathan Doty

I salute you for your injunity....

In the 1950s -1960s we in California home built a "trap Door Bug bag." considerably larger and always square 12X12 or 14X14 were common sizes -- same principle -except - we used the rubber from bicycle inner tubes to apply tension the door and originally the bags were very sturdy burlap bags we obtained from plumbing supply stores, later in early 1960s the Nylon bags appeared on the market and immediately replaced the burlap bags.

We always stated
"if a much needed item was not available in the dive market place we invented it;
If it was available but costs over a hard earned California dollar we made it "


Now over 60 years later the principle of a trap door game bag has migrated to sunny Florida and rather than California Bugs is being used to bag Florida Fish !

Once again I salute you for you injunity... You impressed this old California bug diver !

Keep up the good work

Sam Miller, 111

 

[johndiver999]

I think that when you first use this device, you might have some problems with the flap. This pertains to lion fish collection; you generally are going to slam the fish in there on the end of the pole spear and then strip the fish forcibly off the spear tines by withdrawing quickly. I fear that the flap is going to be too weak to serve this function and will tend to pop out.

Not an issue with lobsters. Why do you have the pole spear mounted perpendicular to the bag? if I understand what i am seeing?

 

[Nathan Doty]

Just for carrying. With the handle direction, if you're holding it naturally and walking or standing it will put the stick/spear pointed in front of and behind you instead of crossing in front of you. Then if you're swimming cross armed, it puts then across in front of you without adjusting how I swim. I originally planned on going perpendicular but after actually holding it, parallel seemed the better option.

Once something is in the bag and you've got the equipment out to use, it seems like its less important, but to and from the boat it seems right to me

I've never actually lion fished... we'll call the first go round for that use as being a beta test :laugh: I haven't had this in the water yet so it might get adjusted after being used, but in my living room it's awesome!

 

[Nathan Doty]

@Nathan Doty

I salute you for your injunity....

In the 1950s -1960s we in California home built a "trap Door Bug bag." considerably larger and always square 12X12 or 14X14 were common sizes -- same principle -except - we used the rubber from bicycle inner tubes to apply tension the door and originally the bags were very sturdy burlap bags we obtained from plumbing supply stores, later in early 1960s the Nylon bags appeared on the market and immediately replaced the burlap bags.

We always stated
"if a much needed item was not available in the dive market place we invented it;
If it was available but costs over a hard earned California dollar we made it "


Now over 60 years later the principle of a trap door game bag has migrated to sunny Florida and rather than California Bugs is being used to bag Florida Fish !

Once again I salute you for you injunity... You impressed this old California bug diver !

Keep up the good work

Sam Miller, 111

Thanks, I appreciate it One of my main hobbies through the years is playing "I can build that". Reverse engineering is always fun. And no matter how good business is, I still get a kick out of doing something for pennies. And when I can come up with something that lots can use and anyone can do even if they're on a shoe string budge, I'm happy!.

Oddly enough one of my first ideas was using a 'loose' flap on an actual hinge, and some surgical tubing behind it to actually keep things closed. Then as I played with the idea in my head I started simplifying.

 

[Hoag]

I am not criticizing, I honestly don't know the answer and I am a bit curious, but by using a mesh laundry bag is there a risk that the spines of the lionfish will stick out through the mesh and still be a danger?

 

[Nathan Doty]

Putting a LF in that bag would be a great way to experience a world of hurt :laugh: The bag comes off and PVC tube goes on for them. The bag is lobster only. If a lion manages to sting you through a quarter inch of plastic, you probably shouldn't have messed with that particular fish!