[NateH706]

Originally Posted by salboski

If you have a carpet store in your town, (ones that lay carpet down or replace it) they usually have a big dumpster in the front or the back full of the carpet and foam padding that they replaced. I think the foam padding would be a good filler. After you put the sheets in, do you fill the rest up with sand? How high do you fill it up with rags?

There's no need for sand, unless you want to use it. I know Lucky was thinking of filling a pvc pipe or something with sand in the middle of the bag and stuffing around it, to give it a center of gravity.

Putting just sand in the bag would make it heavier than it's designed to be, and putting sand just freely into the bag will cause it all to eventually collect at the bottom of the bag.

Filling the bag with just cloth, should come out to the approx. designed weight of the bag.

[CHawkins]

After you take the time and the materials into account, is buying an unfilled bag and filling it yourself really a savings? It doesn't seem like it would be.

edit: Let's think about this.

The filled Thai bag is $230 right now. The unfilled is $150. So you save $80 right there.

But dude on the page before this said that Raglady.com sells 50 pounds of 18" square cloths for $55. The bag is supposed to be 100 pounds, so that's $110 of cloth you just bought. Between the $150 bag and the $110 of cloth, we're at $260.

That puts you over what you'd have spent if you just bought the filled bag, and we haven't even accounted for the value of your time (trust me, your time is worth something). It's going to take a while to pack the bag, check it, pack it some more, check it, rearrange the packing, etc.

Let's say that instead, you only bought $55 worth of rags (50lbs) and filled the rest of the bag up with 50 lbs of sand. 50 lbs of sand at my local Lowe's costs about $5, which puts us at $210 ($150 for the unfilled bag, $55 for the rags and $5 for sand). So doing it this way carries hard costs that are $20 less than buying it filled, but $20 isn't much of a savings.

Again, we haven't accounted for the value of your time yet. What could you be doing instead of farting around with torn sheets and rags and a dirty-ass bag of sand? Could you be playing with your kids? Working some overtime? Hooking up? That's worth way more than $20. Hell, if you have a halfway decent job, spending more than an hour on this project means you LOST money on it compared to buying filled.

So worst case scenario is that you spend more in time & materials than it would cost to buy filled, and best case is you save maybe $20.

It hardly seems worth the hassle.

[NateH706]

A couple thing CHawkins, though your point is valid to a degree.

You're forgetting shipping costs. I'll use all my costs so far for the example:

I got the CSI Powerhide Thai bag for $90 from MMAmuscle.com. The filled version of this bag from the same site is $199, so you're dealing with a $110 difference to begin with. The same bag is actually on sale at Combat Sports' own site for $179, so if we want to use that number than right now you're talking $90 for just the filling.

Then there is the difference in shipping costs. The shipping for my order (which included another type of bag, and t-shirts) was only $14 total. Shipping for a filled thai bag will begin around $40.

So far, my total is $104. The cost for the filled bag is now $220.

We have a $120 to spend on filling the bag without going over budget.

Now, I spent $15 to a non-profit store for 8 sheets. I also just today received 3 garbage bags full of old t-shirts and sheets that cost me $0. This is all before I even go through my own collection of sheets, old clothes etc. This is also before I dip into the packrat well of my in-laws. With just the bags of material I have so far, I can confidently say that I'll definitely fill between 1/3-1/2 of the bag. So even if I was to hypothetically fill the rest of the bag with bulk clothing from a store such as Lucky Strike's example, I'm only going to spend around $60 additional to my current costs.

Total cost if I hypothetically spent $60 more on rags - $164. Still have a savings of $60.

And that's with my overpaying for the sheets from Salvation Army. Like I said, I know I can get that material cheaper, but it's to a good cause.

If you have the proper resources, and actually plan out the filling of the bag ahead of time, you will easily save yourself $50+. I guarantee I can fill this bag for a total of less than $150, with minimal time spent on the bag.

If you just buy the bag without thinking about how you're going to fill it, you'll probably end up just breaking even if not spending extra. But if you collect resources ahead of time, and take account of what stores and materials are available to you, it's definitely worth buying the unfilled bag if you're willing to do the work.

As for the time spent on filling the bag - For me it's not a big deal. I collected all the material this week so that tommorow while I spend all day watching football, I can cut up and fill the bag with little distraction and no time loss. Granted, not everyone can make that type of time for themselves, but I planned ahead to make sure I had Sunday free, and now I'm just making the best of it. Lets not fool ourselves as to how complicated the filling of the bag is or how long it takes. Companies have to be able to produce bags and fill them with their own material in an economic and efficient fashion. As long as you don't clump all the materials together, and just keep them in adequate sized strips, the cloth will settle as needed as you use the bag.

Don't let the fact that it's taken time from when I purchased the bag to when it will be filled fool you. That's simply due to my schedule. All in all I will have a filled, quality thai bag for less than $150, and I'm confident that the initial filling of the bag could be completely done within a day. At this point, since I know I have a whole crate of extra old shirts that I can cut up if need be, I'm confident I can probably finish filling the bag for less than $20-30 more, giving me a grand total of less than $130.

Edit: Underlined certain sections for the people with short attention spans. Oh, and mmamuscle.com is the bomb.

[Crazy_Jab215]

Buy a filled one as soon as it arrives at your house you can put it up and use it in the same day it should take about a week to find a 100 lbs. of material.


I'll laugh at you people while your stuffing carpet and sheets into your bag i'm just hanging mine's up.

[NateH706]

Originally Posted by Crazy_Jab215

Buy a filled one as soon as it arrives at your house you can put it up and use it in the same day it should take about a week to find a 100 lbs. of material.


I'll laugh at you people while your stuffing carpet and sheets into your bag i'm just hanging mine's up.

And if you can afford to, by all means go ahead. Meanwhile, for my week of finding sheets that will make my bag work just as well as yours, I'll afford a brand new pair of thai gloves for my bag with the money I've saved.

[anvar]

Originally Posted by NateH706

And if you can afford to, by all means go ahead. Meanwhile, for my week of finding sheets that will make my bag work just as well as yours, I'll afford a brand new pair of thai gloves for my bag with the money I've saved.

how much is your time worth? if you make 40 bucks an hour you waste money by filling it your self....:-p

[NateH706]

Originally Posted by anvar

how much is your time worth? if you make 40 bucks an hour you waste money by filling it your self....:-p

That perspective might work if I was to take time off of work to fill my bag, but who the hell is going to do that? It's leisure time one way or another, I'm not losing any productivity out of my week by filling a bag for a couple hours.

Like I said in my larger post - I'm filling my bag today while watching football, which I was going to do anyway. Or, I could theoretically just spend less time on the forum ( ) - It's not like it takes days to fill a bag - it can be done in a few hours.

[CHawkins]

I'm glad you found a way to make it work for you, Nate.

[Lucky Strike]

My situation is similar to Nate's....my goal was to end up saving enough money to buy thai pads which are like 60-70 bucks.

I won't be moving into my house (i'm currently renting it out) until after my wedding so I couldn't hang it up now if I wanted to since i'm living in an apartment out of town right now due to work. This was the biggest difference maker for me in deciding on an unfilled bag.

I have a 1" closed cell liner around the entire bag that I got for free from a Contractor on the project i'm working on. I was able to compile 50-60 pounds of sheets and t-shirts from family members for free although my free connections are drying up which is why i may need to spend $55 at that website for t shirt rags. I cut up the sheets/shirts I have while watching TV.

It may not end up being worth it for everyone's situation but it certainly is in mine.