Flies ruining projects

[Dukester]

I've posted to another group about this but thought I would post here anyway since the "shop" is for woodworking. It sounds funny but when you spend several nights after work sanding & getting the final details right only to have pieces instantly messed up from flies, it's not so humorous except in the "pulling your hair out" funny.

I live next to about 400 acres of pasture with cattle on it. Annoyingly, the fellow leasing the land stores and rolls out the hay bales in the winter immediately next to the part of the fence closest to our house; probably 100 yards or so from my shop. He never rotates the cows out of this field and when you look over there you see more brown than green grass. The first few years I lived here the previous owner rotated the cows around different fields and I don't remember there being so many flies. Now, however, they are everywhere in/on, around my shop, year round. The tractor, windows, door, everything gets covered in droppings, and I have all but given up on woodworking as the flies ruin finished pieces with their little black dots faster than I can cover pieces to protect them. I can't keep them out of my

24x24 shop, nor get them out once they're in there.

I can't imagine that I'm the only one that lives next to a cowfield & flies and trying to do woodworking. Is there any way to alleviate this short of moving? I've heard of some kind of spray you put on the outside of barns etc., but not at this time of year. Flypaper works, but they still leave droppings even when stuck to the paper. Are bug bombs my only solution? I'm ready to quit woodworking for all the hassle cleaning up the crap even before I get started! Do bug zappers work?

Help!

[Rumpty]

Have you looked up in your attic lately?

[Edwin Pawlowski]

"Dukester"

One of our towns h ad serous fly infestations a couple of years ago. The board of health was involved to try to stop it. YOumay have some help from them if the guy is not doing thing right.

Moths, yes. Most other bugs, no. They won't help with flies or mosquitoes. They can also attract more bugs than they kill.

[Guess who]

I live in the country. They don't get messed up "instantly". I and my neighbour across the road do woodworking, and he lives on the old family farm property, and the farm is run by his brother. What we do is minimise by having built screen doors and windows [he looks right out onto the pasture]. We also cover our work with an old sheet or cloth when not working on it after sanding. When fresh-painted [I do mine in the large garage area] I cover with a wood-frame, plastic covered 'box', or put up a temporary frame and cover with plastic. When finished, keep covered until in the home or sold.

There's a lot of woodworking done out in the countryside. Just use some comon sense and a bit of extra time and material to cover your work when leaving it. It's like precaustions other people take because of dust.

[Dukester]

In my case it was "in an instant". I took the pieces I was working on out to the shop (after keeping them in the house overnight), set them down on a table to fetch a bottle of glue, walked back and had a dozen black dots on the most prominent part of a desktop case - the top. It took another hour to clean this up by sanding & resanding.

Point well taken about screens and covering up however.

[Larry Jaques]

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 07:48:32 -0600, the inscrutable "Dukester" spake:

So don't hang fly strips directly over your work area. (Duh!)

I have cattle in my valley (100+) and next door (5) but dont have too many flies if I'm careful in open doors. I bought screen door hinges and need to get 2 doors made before the weather gets too nice this spring.

Bug bombs chance staining the wood. Use screens, screen doors, pest spray on the door and screens outside, and just be careful to get the doors shut immediately after you open them. A high-velocity fan on the doorway keeps flies at bay, too, like the air curtains at grocery stores.

Or try this: put a spitcoat of shellac on every piece BEFORE machining the boards. That way the flyshit doesn't stick or stain if some of the blighters -do- get in.

======================================================== Was that an African +

or European Swallow? + Gourmet Web Applications ========================================================

[Larry Jaques]

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 07:48:32 -0600, the inscrutable "Dukester" spake:

Yes, but they don't smell very good indoors. I forgot two things: don't eat or drink in the shop. It draws flies.

And make sure all your crevices are filled so they don't just waltz right in through your protective barrier of screens.

======================================================== Was that an African +

or European Swallow? + Gourmet Web Applications ========================================================

[bridger]

move the hay to the other side of the field.

[Philip Lewis]

err... you mean "convince the lessor of the neighboring property to move the hay... "

Other ideas:

Seal up as many holes as you are able to, and put out fly traps to catch any that do get in.

tarp your projects when you leave at night.

Build an "inner room" with pvc and plastic sheeting for when you need to let something dr overnight....

Lure the flies that do get in away from your project area with a bug zapper

Do you like living plants? how about venus fly traps or pitcher plants?

Are pet lizards an option? ;)

[Morris Dovey]

Time for another trebuchet thread...

[J. Clarke]

Nahh, that would be moving the _cows_ to the other side of the field. Or county depending on how big you want to build.

[Dave Hinz]

Couldn't you be ticketed for a mooving violation for something like that?

[Duane Bozarth]

...in reply to...

They're quite effective in reducing total numbers but you don't want the zapper directly in the shop/area you're protecting, just nearby...but, as you correctly, note, they don't do much at all for flies except the one that just happens to fly by since they're not attracted by light. Pheronome baits can help some but they're expensive...

[Silvan]

I grew up half a mile from a landfill in a house that didn't have air conditioning. I know all about flies.

About all you can really do is minimize their access to your space. Seal it up tight and don't leave the door open for an instant longer than necessary. You might even think about airlocks or something.

If you had money and resources, the best plan might be to have a chamber with some kind of hazmat suit you could don so you could open the outer door, enter the death chamber, spray the hell out of everything with some nasty fly killer, then evacuate the air from the chamber, doff the suit, and continue on into the shop.

It sounds ridiculous, and it probably *is* completely impossible to do, but that's about all I can think of that would put and end to flies forever. No matter what you do, you're still going to get flies. I think they enjoy entering our spaces just to shit all over the things we cherish, as a way of reminding us that they're going to eat us some day. Through less extreme controls, you might still get the number down from hundreds to dozens though.

[Edwin Pawlowski]

I though mine worked great until the bulb burned out. The damned thing was attracting more bugs than it zapped. It won't be replaced.

[Duane Bozarth]

We keep two--one in the yard about 50 ft or so from the front door and another about the same distance from the front of the barn...they make a difference in the number of critters around the two areas we're protecting...if/when bulb goes it's quite obvious on numbers around/in the house, for example. About a every-other-month schedule w/ the sprayer and Malathion specifically for the flies is a help, also. Besides our own, there's a feedlot of moderate size (~5 to 7 k-head) 2 mi E and a mi N that keeps the population supplied...

The pheasant and quail around the house in the yard do a reasonable job w/ the 'hoppers, etc., and the swallows make notable contributions to the skeeters, but the flies and other similar beasties are always a pita...particularly last year when it was much wetter than normal for most of the summer.

IMO, YMMV, $0.02, etc., ...

[Duane Bozarth]

:) :(

As I noted in another response, we have our own small lots and are about

3 mi from a commercial feedlot w/ ~5-7,000 cattle on feed. There's an inexhaustible supply. :(

While the flyspecks are a pita, they can be cleaned up--what is a real mess is the residue left by the cutworm moth that winters over as the worm in the winter wheat and then starts a migration to the Rocky Mountains during spring/early summer. They crawl into any conceivable cranny to hide during daytime and leave a reddish/brown stain that simply will not come out of anything porous...

[Dukester]

As an aside, has anyone tried a full size garage screen door like this?

(link to Northern Tool product)

[Edwin Pawlowski]

It should work OK. At work we had a bug problems as we do some jobs for pharmaceutical companies. We made a frame of 2 x 3s and covered it with screening. It sits in the door opening and the door closes down on it to hold it in place. It must be moved, unlike this one, but it was cheap and worked.

[John Grossbohlin]

I've noticed Norm had a soft screen door (for lack of a better description) over the sliding door opening on some episodes...

John