With little help forthcoming from you chaps, I took a chance with another double sawbuck to land Coverite Microlite, another model fabric that doubles as our favorite nymph skin.

Coverite stretches nicely unlike the prior mylar variant I tested. Reinforcing the notion that I’ve found the industry, but the exact material remains at large. Coverite Microlite is close enough to the original Magic Shrimp foil that outside of the lack of colors available, my search is over.

I took one look at the Transparent Green and had to own it.

Yank the cardboard tube out of the center, grab a pair of scissors and simply cut the end of the roll in slices. Two minutes later you’ve got a bagful of 72” strands of 1/4″ or 3/8″ wide Czech nymph material. The roll is 6 ft long, 27 inches wide, and runs about $12 retail.

With that last haul of ancient Mustad hooks, I’ve replaced the expensive foreign scud hooks with a 2X strong Mustad 234B.

It’s a Ring eye, Japanned black,  reversed point, and the extra strength is capable of handling a little bending without falling apart like standard wire hooks.

Bottom-bouncing with heavy nymphs means standard wire will be straightened (weakened) on snags – and the unforged extra strong can resist snags much better,  and I can straighten the hook back to original shape without fear of weakening it measurably.

I bend the last quarter of the shank downward to give it the familiar Czech profile.

It brings back those fond memories from the Eighties; if the right shape wasn’t available we made that too. Thirty years later we’re in the same boat only we lack even the sturdy hooks to bend and twist to our will.

Tags: czech nymphs, mustad hooks, extra strong hooks, magic shrimp foil, vinyl covering, model airplanes, Mustad 234B, reversed point, japanned black, ring eye, short shank, fly tying materials, fly tying blog

Nothing like having your living room covered in gaily colored mounds of drying fiber. I’ve often wondered whether application of an industrial vacuum wouldn’t make the job easier, just suck everything up and start tying flies out of the contents of the dust trap.

Above are the raw elements of spectral dubbing, consisting of the primary colors of the color spectrum; red, cyan (Lt. blue), and yellow – and the secondary colors – orange, purple, and green. Only the cyan and yellow are acid dyed, the rest of the colors were built using RIT dye.

I’ve added a pound of Olive on the end as a tertiary color. I’ll add it to natural colored fur blends to make Olive tints to the original color.

It’s a raw mix of of natural fur that will replace the more expensive (and hard to find) Australian Opossum. A mainstay of my custom blends, Australian Opossum is imbued with tiny curls that retain air, adds loft and resists matting. Unfortunately, our American Opossum lacks those qualities and cannot be used as a substitute.

The spectral effect is the addition of all these colors to a base dubbing in small enough amount so as not to be seen until examined closely. At arm’s length, an Olive dubbing looks Olive – until you hold the fly close and can make out the individual colored fibers contained in the mixture.

It’s one of many building blocks of the Impressionist fly tyer, how to make a fly resemble nothing specific, yet look like everything – and all at the same time. Part of that magic is style and form, part is color.

Spectral dubbing blends should follow the 90/10 rule. 90% of the fur is the color you are attempting to imbue and 10% is the brightly colored fibers that will add a bit of deceit to the final product.

Building the Chaos color

The simplest way to build a good spectral effect is build the “Chaos” color and simply add it to your base fur in the desired quantity.

Add equal amounts of each of the six primary and secondary colors, and mix it into a single color. This is the Chaos color.

Now you can grab a pack of Hareline dubbing off the vendors wall, pinch in 10% – and blend your final product.

Add a bit of opalescent sparkle or other effects if desired.

Above are equal pinches of the six colors. Because it’s a “sticky” fur due to the tiny curls, this will not blend well using an electric blender. It’ll knot itself into clumps of color rather than mix completely.

At right is the knotted mass that came out of the blender. It mixed the colors slightly, but the bulk of the mixture is still clumped color and undesirable.

Non-sticky fibers, those that are straight and lack adhesion, like rabbit – will blend easily, but a good filler candidate is rarely straight, as it’s chosen exactly for this sticky quality.

If you’re building small amounts of fur, a pair of dog grooming wire brushes are needed. Just load both brushes with plenty of fur and pull them in opposite directions numerous times until you approve the result. Larger amounts are better served by mixing them with water, fill a gallon jug about half full and cram the fur inside, shake until it’s a cohesive colored mass.

A well mixed Chaos color; equal parts red, yellow, cyan, green, purple, and orange, creates a red-brown or a “Russet Brown” shown at left.

Tuck that away in a separate bag and add to your base blends to color as needed.

Constructing the Final Blend

The amount shown at left is 10% of what I’ll build, to finish the task we’ll add that handful to 90% more of a standard olive blend.

Because I built both a spectral color and it’s a filler fiber, all I need is binder and wrapper in Olive to make my final mixture.

I loaded the Chaos color on one brush and a mixture of medium olive beaver (binder) and natural Red Fox squirrel body (guard hairs, wrapper) on the other. Just put the teeth of the combs together and yank in opposite directions enough times to mix the two. Eventually all the hair will wind up on one brush, just pull it off and reload the combs as many times as needed.

Above is a close-up of the final mix. It’s a medium olive imbued with the spectral Chaos color. The natural guard hairs are visible as are individual shafts of component color. At two feet, it’s just another olive, but up close almost any color combination is visible.

… which is the desired effect. A dominant base color and just enough of an accompaniment from the mixed primary and secondary colors to assist without overwhelming everything.

Tags: dubbing blends, bulk fly tying materials, spectral dubbing, Red Fox Squirrel, impressionism, primary and secondary color, artist’s color wheel, fly tying

I suppose it’s a “proud papa” moment, realizing that your progeny has met expectations, possibly even exceeded some … but I wouldn’t know with certainty as every time I glanced backwards my Poppa was cringing in horror …

… and Ma didn’t see fit to add the long series of mug shots – as the Police never was able to figure which was my good side.

The “Big Dawg” has finally arrived, equipped with the same adjustable screw, larger and heavier jaw, and the obligatory tungsten carbide edges that allow it to chew through the awkward and ungainly.

At left is the tip detail of both the 4.5” (left) and 5.5” (right) showing the extra jaw length and breadth.

We preserved the same sharp tip, which allows the large size to reach and cut with the same delicacy, and added the longer, heavier jaw to resist deflection, and allowing more force on the cleave without tearing up the screw hole.

The fingerhole spacing is identical to the 4.5” scissor ensuring the same amount of scissor protrudes above the hand as its smaller cousin. Interchanging the two models will not require any adjustment in the user’s grip.

Having spent the last four months testing and retesting finger placement, shaft lengths, and “dogfooding” all those really clever ideas that proved less so – I’m very much pleased by the final product.

I call these the “General Purpose” model, 5.5” inches in length and designed to be the scissor for all your flies, not merely the small or delicate. The larger blades allow for larger chunks of material to be cut in a single snip, and should plow through those awkward or large materials that cause the smaller blade to deflect.

I still wouldn’t cut bead chain with them, that’s the job of a heavy shear style scissor – not something with a refined point. Everything else is fair game.

Reminder: Owners of the original surgical stainless Sixth Finger scissor have the right to upgrade to this or the 4.5” tungsten model for $22. By itself the retail on the large size (5.5”) is a dollar more than the 4.5” variant, $28 and $29 respectively.

I’ve updated the ecommerce website to reflect the scissor’s availability, and will be mailing all 5.5” backorders starting tomorrow – after I’ve put these through the quality control process. More information on the scissors can be found in earlier posts, including Mommy’s lecture on proper scissor etiquette, don’t miss it.

Full Disclosure: I am the principal vendor for the Sixth Finger scissor and will benefit monetarily from any sale of this incredibly awesome scissor. All superlatives used to describe the male enhancing qualities and function should therefore be taken with a grain of salt.

Tags: Sixth Finger scissor, tungsten carbide inserts, Big Dawg, proud poppa, ecommerce, fly tying scissors, 5.5” sixth finger, general purpose sixth finger

There’s no such thing as a bad Olive. Us fly tiers being overly fond of the color and have two dozen shades isn’t half enough.  While puzzling my way through the RIT Forest Green – Tan – makes – Olive Conundrum, I’d figures out that it was the dye temperature I’d failed to get hot enough, and only the tan had activated.

Now I was admiring another Olive project, a lot bigger – and  I was relieved it wasn’t the unknowns of a balky dye I’d be fighting. I could reproduce the desired color in a single pass through the dye bath, and the target material was fur which is much more friendly than moisture repelling duck feathers.

This time the wrinkle is the material isn’t white, which adds a bit of preplanning when converting one of Mother Nature’s colors into something else.

I’d describe the starting color as a warm tan to a warm light brown, and the qualities of its existing color needed to be factored into our conversion to make it a warm medium Olive.

Olive is Green, Yellow, and a bit of dark Gray or Black. The original color isn’t white – so I’d have to count some of it as the dark component of Olive, and it’s a warm color – so it’ll count as yellow as well.

(From past posts, remember adding green cools the olive, adding yellow warms it, and adding more black – darkens it.)

If we took the same dye formula used on white materials, and we didn’t watch the color closely, merely exposing the material to the bath for the same length of time, we’d wind up with Olive both darker and warmer than our target color. So we’ll remove some of the yellow and some of the black in the dye mixture to compensate.

If medium Olive is 45% Green, 45% Yellow, and 10% Black – I’d compensate with dye bath comprised of 65% Green, 25% Yellow, and 5% black.

As my starting dye is not a bright green (like Kelly Green), rather it’s a Forest Green, there’ll be no need to add any black, so the final mix will be 75% Forest Green and 25% Golden Yellow (using RIT colors).

At right shows the initial rinse, most of the water bleeding off is cold Green which is expected.

Getting your Monies Worth

A single box of RIT will dye a pound of material, and simple tasks like chicken necks or a Hare’s mask will have you pouring most of your money into the sink. A couple ounces of teal feathers or saddle hackle doesn’t even scratch the coloring potential of the full RIT package, and having open dye packages laying around your garage is a known hazard. It’ll sift out of the box or get dropped onto the garage floor in dry form, and the next time the car is washed you’ll track it into the house.

As a fly tyer in the tertiary grip of the obsession, whose materials are purchased by the pound, dyeing represents a way of breathing new life into chewed up material, or making a lifetime supply of questionable colors less so.

I’ll dye the target material and take advantage of the remaining color in the pot to dye other feathers or picked-over Whiting capes – those whose  #14, #16, and #18 hackles have already been removed. I’ll use the butt end of the capes for streamers or big dry flies like Green Drakes or Golden Stones.

Having a complimentary shade of Partridge, Guinea Fowl, or that gifted Pheasant your neighbor blew daylight through – lends an extra hide or skin new life, and recoups some of the money you might have paid.

Back to Cow Flop Olive

As I’m already admiring a half pound of cow flop Olive on my carpet, I ran some teal through the dye bath, then followed that with a couple of well chewed Grizzly capes.

Those complimentary colors and dissimilar materials means I’ve got the ability to start tying flies that look cohesive due to color alone. Teal and dubbing is the Bird’s Nest, and dubbing and large Grizzly hackles gives me Green Drakes, Olive Marabou Leeches, and Wooly Buggers.

What most interesting in the picture above is the teal and Grizzly capes. The dye bath was custom built to make a tan into a warm olive, now its true color is revealed to be a cold green. It’s validation of our dye mixture, the tan bleeds through the green to make the fur a warm Olive, and the hackle and teal both started as white/black, and the dye bath builds a colder green absent the warming influence of the tan.

It’s working with Mother Nature’s colors – rather than overpowering them with dye.

… and it’s why you see so many deep dark colors in fly shops and so few pastels. Most commercial vendors use the “overpower” method of dyeing which gut-slams the original color into the background, eliminating the shade it can cast on the final product, and yields dark results.

Working in concert with the original color allows you to build some of the most valuable and sought after colors, like Bronze Blue Dun and the entire Dun family.

The unanswered question is “what am I going to do with half a pound of cow flop Olive?” – mating it with 18 miles of Olive tinsel that I inadvertently purchased is no surprise, but it’s actually a new filler I’m testing – the Poor Man’s Aussie Opossum, only cheaper.

Not to worry, I’ll send samples – once I’ve got the other eight colors dyed.

Tags: dyeing fly tying materials, Olive, colorizing fur, bulk fly tying materials, RIT dyes, teal flank, grizzly hackle, picked over neck, cow flop, fly tying obsession

Singlebarbed reader Spencer has trod where only the crazed and obsessed have dared and in traditional fashion I’ve started making excuses while flailing about trying to help.

“ … you mean you actually took my advice? That was your first mistake.”

The issue is simple.  A dye manufacturer boasts of an olive or brown and both are complex colors made of multiple sub-colors. From your watercolor days, brown can be made a thousand different ways (usually by all the colors running together), but most vendors use a combination of reds and blues or orange and purple to get brown.

Spencer dutifully tossed in his really expensive Whiting neck he hasn’t owned up to inexpensive rabbit fur test chunk and wound up with a nice purple for his trouble.

Been there. Spent most of last weekend in the exact same place with RIT dye. If I knew more of what comprised color on the mineral side I might have a definitive answer, right now it’s lumped under “sucks to be you.”

Dyeing destroys a lot of materials during the learning process but over time you can handle certain types of calamities, the rest you dry and do your best to find a use for – the material hasn’t been destroyed, it’s just not the awesome medium olive you’d hoped it would become.

If you can’t get a brown to dye brown , there’s little you can do to fix it – and the only variables are listed below:

1) Heat – make the dye bath hotter or colder from the failed temperature. Some minerals may only dissolve at certain temperatures, so if you dye brown and get bluish purple, it could be the red is activated only by higher temperatures than the blue. Purple means that some red and blue fired, but blue-ish purple suggests more blue than red fired.

2) Over-dye or tint the color back into the acceptable range. It works best for lighter colors as you’re adding additional color to an already dyed material. Dyeing dark purple with yellow will have no effect, but dyeing a light green with some brown and yellow will yield an olive or olive tint.

3) Time – leave the mess in the pot overnight. This should only be done on the darkest colors as even Tan left overnight will yield a brown feather. Perhaps time is required to get the other color(s) to precipitate onto the feathers.

Over-dyeing is also not for the faint of heart, but it’s one of the ways you can get the rarified colors like bronze blue dun or a multi-colored feather.

Last weekend I’d agreed to reproduce some of Cal Bird’s teal colors and had approached the issue with great trepidation – Cal being a trained artist and therefore fully fluent in the manipulation of colors and tints.

I’d dutifully followed the vendor’s color guide and built an olive and a brown from other colors. RIT lacks an olive, and their brown was too dark, so I mixed the custom colors in a proportion that I thought would yield something close…

It didn’t, and I was left scratching my head like friend Spencer.

The dye was largely RIT forest green with about 10% RIT tan, but the green vanished no matter what temperature was used.

I yanked the feathers before they became too dark, but left a pinch of them in the pot to test the overnight method. The result is above, a rich dark brown.

It didn’t matter what I tried, more heat, fixative, or dye yielded a pan full of forest green water and tan feathers. Over-dyeing was the only option, as I’d run out of suggestions from the manufacturer – who insisted I’d get an olive with the two colors mixed.

This drab, cold tan is shown below. It was yanked from the 90% green bath earlier – at the point when it had added all the tan needed to make the base color.

It has a miniscule amount of green in the feathers – just enough to turn the color cold.

I lump quasi-colors, those that I wasn’t expecting, under the destroyed feathers outcome;  the colors are useful and the feathers are undamaged – only the end result is unexpected.

A couple days later I subjected the now dry “cold tan” feathers I’d pulled early, to a bath containing only green and a bit of yellow. I needed only the smallest tint of color added to warm it to the sample color.

The second bath applied what was missing to alter the color into the successful range. Green being equal parts yellow and blue and adding additional yellow – allowed the color to “warm” the feathers without obscuring the tan. There are hints of green in the feather duff at the base of each feather, but this is a brown-olive as dictated by the sample on the right.

Cal’s instructions are shown on the envelope, “olive and maple sugar.”

You can destroy feathers in millions of ways, with only a couple options to salvage the result. Consulting the color often allows you to pull the feathers when the unexpected results – and alters the problem from imbuing a light item with the finished color, to altering the existing color to match a desirable range.

Sorry, Spencer. It’s all part of the craft.

Tags: RIT, Cal Bird, teal, over-dyeing, tint, brown olive, bulk fly tying materials, custom dyed feathers, TINTEX maple sugar, whitefishcantjump.com, feather dyeing