Nigh on two years ago, I began working on my (second picture) and then on my first instructable. Within those two years, the bag has been blogged around the world, won an instructables.com contest and various art awards, been presented in various galleries and the Oregon Museum of Craft, and has even been featured on German public television. More important than that, however, is that immediately after publishing the instructable, people began making their own bags, improving on my design, and posting suggestions for people interested in making their own. Thus is the nature of instructables.com. What you'll need to construct the body of the bag Floppy Disks: 42 disks are used in the bag, so in a box of 50 you get some to practice on. Canvas: Scrap canvas at least 16'x42' Binding material: I used hemp twine, some people used zip ties, find what works best for you.
Leather or Sailmaker's needle: If using twine, you will need an appropriate needle (see step 12). Drill and drill bits: Use a drill bit anywhere between 1/8' and 3/16' Wood and nails: To construct a jig for drilling disks. Scissors: To cut with.
Install External Floppy Disk Drive
Glue: We'll get to glue later. Not shown: Sewing machine or needle. Thread of your choice. A couple of good movies. Lay out your matrix, setting the sides aside. Trace the three rectangles onto the canvas.
You're going to want to leave a half inch border around the 4x9 rectangle and a one inch border around three edges of the two smaller rectangles and a half inch border on the remaining edge. These borders will form the hems on the fabric to keep it from unraveling and give the bag a neater appearance.
Floppy Disk For Sale
Floppy Disk Install Image
The over-sized borders on the smaller rectangles are to form flaps which provide an overlap when the matrix is folded up. Since we will be using a glue to adhere the floppies to the canvas while we secure them with twine, we will need to choose an appropriate glue for the job. I tried using Elmer's bull glue, but gorilla glue will work just as poorly. TEST YOUR GLUE ON SCRAP MATERIALS! I had to resew the entire matrix because the glue soaked through the fabric and hardened, barely adhering to the floppies. See the second picture.
In my tests I found that both water based and polymer based work perfectly without soaking through the fabric. They dry clear as a bonus. When you are using a synthetic webbing, you can cauterize the edges to prevent fraying; However, when you are using an organic fiber, you do not have this option. There are many adhesives on the market designed to prevent fraying, but I wanted to do this project as organically as possible, so I stitched the edges. Set your sewing machine to stitch a back tack, or cross stitch and sew the end s of the webbing making many passes and getting as close to the edge as possible. (this can also be done by hand.) Then all that is left to do is trim the fluff at the very end to neaten up the appearance of the webbing.
Because I bought these diskettes new, rather than finding them in a dumpster like my last bag, I decided to make the rest of the bag as organic as possible, to avoid using more new plastics than necessary. I used water based adhesives and organic fibers. To test out the bag I took a class with a heavy textbook. Yes, that's right: I voluntarily payed to take calculus during my summer. I use the bag whenever I can and, other than a few knots coming undone (easily remedied), the bag holds together perfectly. If I could do this project again, I would poke holes in the bottom, because it is essentially watertight. Rather than the footman's loop, one might be able to weave the strap in such a manner that it would loop through the bag, supporting the bottom.
I have a cardboard bag that is very similar in dimension to this bag and the strap is exposed, supporting the bottom of the bag, 'weaves' into the bag on the side and then back out at the top. One could easily do this by having the strap support the bottom of the bag on the outside, weave it through the space between the disks on the bottom and the bottom disk on the side (make a slot through the canvas, of course), then allowing the strap to come out through the space between the bottom of the top disk on the side.