Category Archives: Fly Tying

We who are about to die, salute you …

The only reason I have any fishing gear remaining in the house is She hasn’t seen the carnage yet …

It was to be a tale of Good and Bad News. The Good News being she would be occupied elsewhere all weekend, and I could go fishing…

The Bad News being any thoughts along those lines dispelled by the same warning tingle that alerts Peter Parker to the menace of Doc Octopus; a whirl of tan wings trundling through the living room about the size and shape of a scout for the dreaded Great White Hackle-Slurping-Fur-Crapping moth swarm.

NukeTheRoom

Alert to the danger you rush to your tying bench knowing it to be at risk, and you’re met by the peaceful bliss of Smallville – all defenses in place, everything bagged and put away, and nary a movement from any drawer however dark and remote.

… and while in the bathroom you see another “tan Fokker” climbing for elevation and mash it gleefully against a wall.

Which leads to a check of extended storage; bags and boxes containing your overabundances that aren’t used as often, the full skins too large to fit in the drawer, the pheasant tail bags, and the sack of salt water colored buck tail, all which come up clean.

… then the third sighting and subsequent kill, and as you scrub fragments of chitin and hairy wing onto your pants leg – you know that sickening feeling that somewhere, somehow, you’re the unwitting host to a really bad infestation …

Hudson: [Knowing that the Aliens are close, Hicks and Vasquez are welding the door shut] Movement. Signal’s clean. Range, 20 meters.
Ripley: They’ve found a way in, something we’ve missed.
Hicks: We didn’t miss anything.
Hudson: 17 meters.
Ripley: [Checking the tracker] Something under the floor, not in the plans, I don’t know.
Hudson: 15 meters.
Newt: Ripley.
Hicks: Definitely inside the barricades.
Newt: Let’s go.
Hudson: 12 meters.
Ripley: That’s right outside the door. Hicks, Vasquez get back. Hudson: Man, this is a big fuckin’ signal.
Hicks: How are we doing Vasquez, talk to me?
Vasquez: Almost there.
[They welded the door shut, and stepped back away from the door]
Vasquez: There right on us.
Hicks: [Waiting for the Aliens] Remember, short controlled bursts.
Hudson: 9 meters. 7. 6.
Ripley: That can’t be; that’s inside the room.
Hudson: It’s reading right man, look!

I’d checked everything I used for storage except the Room That Has No Name, containing the unused normal household extras – a few boxes of unused books, some extra dishes, a stack of my hard fishing gear – rods and tubes …

… and opening the door was witnessing the sack of Rome, complete with scurrying hordes of insects pouring out of the crevasses and crawling onto the walls to avoid the thin light intruding on their debauchery.

… and with them went all plans for fishing, as the infestation I found in the storage room was so bad, so numerous, and so blatant, that I simply closed the door, and wadded a towel against the jamb to keep the balance of the house clear.

Gross.

The real crime is that I’m about to be banned from my own domicile unless I return to lures and bait. Past outbreaks having sensitized She Who Cares Not for Dead Things to the roulette played out on my tying bench each evening.

… and the source of the infestation not some unmarked boxes of dead animal pelts – rather a down comforter opened by a mouse to feather his own nest, then exploited by the Winged Borg to explode their population exponentially under my watchful care.

Protesting my innocence being completely futile as past sins have me so far in the doghouse as to welcome fleas, as they’ll be the only thing talking to me for the foreseeable future.

All that’s left is the porous “I love you” defense, where the Condemned foreswears a weekend of fishing for the, “I could’ve gone fishing but instead I cleaned the store room knowing how much it meant to you” defense.

While it always sounds good on paper, keeping a straight face is critical, and while you’re making the Ultimate Man-bleat-noise she’ll see some laggard squadron of the “Dawn Patrol” break out of the closet to start their death spiral in front of her … my grin will out, and my arse cooked.

And The Lord said, “Modify my killing patterns not with thy name or risk Everlasting Censure”

Reduced_DressingMy last blurb mentioned how everything was likely to arrive early, be shorter, and fraught with unrealized complications, and would require anglers to brave Nature’s adversity.

I forgot how modification of a standard pattern was a Sacred Cow and could land a naïve fellow in hot water.

Reducing a pattern to fit on a smaller hook requires considerable changes to the basic pattern, and a canny tier needs to understand the waters they just parked their toe in …

The materials and accoutrements of large hooks rarely extend to their smallish cousin without interpretation, as the physics of the smaller hook cannot be denied.

Yet the biggest issue facing an angler intent on modifying an existing pattern is not the dressing, rather it’s the inherent Magic in the dressing. Tinkering with a known killer that may be a couple decades older than you are is the equivalent of tinkering with “luck” – crucial to fishing yet largely indefinable, akin to Jungle magic.

If you change a favorite classic to reduce its shape, colors, silhouette, or weight, did you ruin it?

… and if so is goat sacrifice enough to appease an Angry God?

Most anglers would never consider something so base and tasteless, and the notion of changing the tail on an Adams’ is sacrilege. An Adam’s is perfection, a fly that dominated every environment into which it has been hurled …

While we commend your fervor, one of your biggest and earliest hurdles  in fly fishing is the understanding there is nothing special about an Adam’s or Royal Wulff, they simply enjoy the same happenstance that allowed VHS to beat out Betamax, which was a better public relations firm.

… and us fly fishing snobs can be swept up into two piles; those that insist everything you throw at a fish should remind it of what it ate a minute ago, or, the group that insists you should scare, piss off, or antagonize the fish into lashing out uncontrollably.

That first bunch will laud you if scientific rationale is part of your color and material reduction, the second will adore you if you spread a little opalescence or add an invasive tinsel.

In most cases neither group will acknowledge the other, and while they may occasionally buy each other a drink or surrender the riffle to the other contingent hoping they fail they do have much more in common than most would think.

The agree on the silhouette of bugs, their many stages, the split finger fastball, and the small of a woman’s back, but deviate on the colors, tinsels, and beads with which each must be dressed.

In short, you can tear a grand old pattern into pieces, reassemble the silhouette and colors, and you’re likely to have as killing a pattern as when you started. Add in a bit of sparkle or give the old gal a hint of color as a “tramp stamp” and you’ve not sullied the past an iota, merely given homage where it’s due.

… but if you put your first name in front of it, or use the word “invented” in the same sentence … you’re reviled by both groups, you’re an Untouchable, a Poser – or worse, a Belieber … to be cast from us like a indicator foam in trophy water.

Tying the Awkward hackle, adding artistry and function to the humdrum business of wet fly hackle

I was never at a loss as to what to call it, my only concern was whether I would call it the same thing twice or merely be content with whatever epithet I spat from clenched teeth.

A technique about as awkward as is frustrating, and while those that attempt it are not likely to mention genius in the same breath, it shows rare possibilities of extending traditional wet fly hackle into materials and styles not considered traditional.

As hackle typically covers the tie off of everything that came before it, all you need remember is the amount of “hackle” you prepare must change based on the number of turns you’ll apply, as well as the circumference of the thread you’re about to cover. As “less is more” in wet fly hackle, consider using no more than three turns total – more if using this technique to build a “Palmer” hackle or specialty hackle like a Spey fly requires.

I start with a slip of paper about 3/8” wide and three inches long, and smear a hint of tacky wax to the bottom two inches, giving me an inch to hold that is not sticky. Two inches of “awkward” hackle is about 3-4 turns of a #8 hook.

The beauty of this style is that any fiber is eligible to make a hackle flue, so you can select them based on color, texture, action, or stagger lengths so one color is short and close to the fly – and a second fiber is longer and drapes over the body.

It can also be used to “right size” feathers too big for the hook size you’re tying, as you can pull the fibers short now they’re no longer connected to a bothersome stem.

Clip a few fibers of material and press them into the tacky edge of the paper at regular intervals. Select a second, third, or fourth material and fill in the spaces with additional fibers to make your finished hackle.

In the below example, I’ve added Maple Sugar Teal flank fibers every 1/4 inch, and filled in the gaps with Olive dyed Hare’s Mask guard hair, using both feather and fur to make my hackle. The teal flank is set longer than the Hare’s Mask, which should project a few tips out past the halo of Olive fur, ensuring their color shows separate and distinct.

Teal_OliveHaresMask

Once the amount of fibers is appropriate for the hackle density, simply throw a loop of thread from the hook shank and slide the fiber side of the “hackle tape” through the loop, holding onto the top (or bottom) inch that does not have wax on it.

loop_tealOliveHares

Now grit your teeth and hold the loop closed with your left thumb and forefinger and run your scissors up between the gap of paper and thread and cut away the paper.

Now spin the mixture as quickly as you can to have the thread loop capture each fiber and lock it between the threads. If you’re not swearing yet, start – as really profane swearing can alter gravity and it’s attempt at dropping all your earlier work out of the loop and into your lap.

spun_loop

Transfer the loop to a set of hackle pliers and continue to spin the combined materials tightly. The more turns per inch on the resultant hackle the better the fibers will be anchored on the completed fly.

Awkward_Olive_Completed

Here is the completed “Awkward Olive” nymph showing the final hackle. The Maple teal was set longer than the Olive Hare’s Ear guard hair, and the regular rabbit duff found along with the guard hair was left in the final mix to offer softness and motion once wet.

Awkward_Olive_top

Here’s the same fly shown from above which allows you to see the two lengths of hackle added with a single application. The long teal fibers offer considerably more motion than usual as they are not connected to a stem, and the secondary fibers of Olive Hare’s mask pulse when wet, giving the result a compelling action unavailable in traditional hackle.

Use your imagination, add feather fibers and marabou strands, hair, deer hair fibers, any fibrous material can be used including yarn fragments and bits of tinsel. The only caution is the larger the fiber diameter the harder it is to lock tightly with thread.

Don’t be afraid to add a loop of Size “A” thread or even Kevlar thread for super coarse materials or extremely large flies including those tied Spey style. Wax the loop assist it holding the materials in place for the delicate cut that must be made.

While wax is not as popular as it once was, any tier worth his salt ignores what the crowd likes in favor of what works. It comes from too many icy winters filling fly boxes with bits of dead animal, the kind of behavior that depresses your Facebook “friend” count and neighbors looking to borrow sugar …

What do you suppose they’ll think of Jungle Cock?

blue_guinea_nails On the one hand it’s a relief we’ll not see another Yank led away in manacles after overstaying his welcome by pillaging the Royal and Ancient Bird Museum, on the other hand an anorexic second story supermodel might make a hell of a splash on Interpol …

Now that drab genetic chicken hackle is so completely-yesterday, it’s nice to see that girls might rend a big handful of plumes off something that squawks – instead of looking down their nose at Mister Outdoorsy who’s been ventilating all manner of birds for a couple of centuries.

pheasant_fingers

… but it’s that meat-headed rod builder that I want to find. Some thick skulled overly sensitive craftsman who wanted a couple extra days in the woods – who paid off his debt after shellacking  his wife fingernails with the local warbler. That same unthinking fellow that has doomed our game birds and fly shops to yet another tidal wave of fashion seeking society dames …

… I’m going to find you, and this time I’m going to hurt you …

Can fly tying cleanliness lead to hoarding obsession?

Homer Price and Gigantic Twine Ball It was a two room apartment, with four occupants and at least three outdoor hobbies participating. Keeping all those vocations in their respective corners was bad enough, not counting us kids fighting for extra flat space at the kitchen table.

In one of many book sessions I discovered deer hair and how to spin it. Now, each time the back door opened there were howls of dismay as the blizzard of gaily colored trimmings blew under my bed – or into the living room.

Some well-wisher had gifted me with the skeletal frame of a fly tying material clipping-catcher, minus the all-important catch-all bag. I explained what was needed and Ma dutifully whipped out a nice mesh bag that we threaded onto the harness. I dogged it onto the shaft of my Korean knock-off Thompson Model A and domestic bliss was restored.

Her cornbread no longer featured unwanted stubble and I discovered that a material-clipping-catcher was the Greatest Invention I’d Never Bought …

… and never will again.

The first month I reveled in the grief my brother caught for spreading his wire-rope splicing gear all over our bedroom. Now Ma was picking up snippets of waxed thread or rope, broken needles, and fragments of trimmed wire, while I cheerfully snipped away at Bass Awesomeness and made faces at Meathead Dumbass Older Bro while Ma lectured him sternly.

The second month I discovered that fly tying material clipping-catchers had uses far beyond simply catching all the airborne debris. They became a particle reservoir of everything I’d ever made, or ever will make …

By the third month I wondered how I’d managed to tie fly without one, and why the fly tying media never touched on the thousands of reuses all those trimmed parts represented.

Instead of opening a drawer to find Grizzly tailing material, you simply dug into the snippet bag, whose contents you’d never emptied, and was full to bursting with animal parts mixed with bits of toast, old socks, and small unidentifiable stuff …

By month four the ball of debris was so big you had to adjust it in your lap when you sat down. It was crucial to your tying as it had two or three inches of everything you owned, shaving minutes off each fly as you no longer had to guess which cardboard box contained pink and white variegated chenille, or that ancient spool of mint floss.

It was just there. Roll the ball around until you saw the tag end.

But at month five you realized it wasn’t gold so much as iron pyrite, that’s when the first moth fluttered up from the bottom of your accumulated ball of debris. You’d mistaken ash from Pop’s pipe dottle for the eggs of fly tying’s only nemesis.

Now, your ode to Homer Price was doomed.

… but not before you thought about saving your prize, whether you should endure the kiss of all those noxious chemicals, or could you endure separation anxiety and simply toss it and start anew.

This was an important moral quandary, which you would practice many times when you discovered girl friends.

The Debut of the “Do it Yourself” fish hook?

The folks at Fishingmatters Ltd, whom you may recall purchased the Partridge hook company, are concerned about the amount of time us over-consuming fly tiers spend searching for the better hook …

In the June issue of Tackle Trade World (pg10), suggest that they’re introducing the “Do It Yourself” hook, outfitted with a straight shank that allows you to bend it into the curve of your liking.

“ … research carried out by the company that shows advanced fly fishermen and pro guides are constantly searching for new hook patterns that don’t exist.”

– via Tackle Trade World, June 2012

As an “advanced fly tyer” and chronic hoarder I can attest to the time spent searching for good hooks. Most of the niche players that sponsored hook innovation like Partridge, have been plowed under by the Japanese and Korean hook companies, and esoteric models like the Flybody, Mariano Midge, Captain Hamilton, and Keith Fulsher’s Thunder Creek, all died lonesome.

Consolidation is a good thing until the pendulum swings too far and you’re left with Plain Vanilla and his kid sister …

Hooks used to have odd bends and varying length shanks, and an entire hook nomenclature was discarded to reduce the many to only best sellers. Outside of the constant influence of the salmon-steelhead crowd, and the Czech nymph phenomenon, we haven’t seen much in the way of new hooks in the last decade.

X-Stout, Offset, X-Heavy, Kirbed, Sproat, O’Shaughnessy, Limerick, X-light, 1,2,3,4,5 XL(ong), 1,2,3,4,5 XS(trong), and 1,2,3,4,5 XS(hort), haven’t been on the packaging in a mighty long time. Nor do today’s anglers understand why in this pinched-down-barb-era, how a good sproat or limerick offered something tangibly and different.

But we’ve got Black Nickel, which is a start …

Where we find more ways for you to use butt ends and random clippings

I’ve always called it by what it’s good at doing, combining all manner of leftovers into a “chaos wrap”, which tames a gaggle of unruly and dissimilar materials into something cohesive on your hook shank.

As well as melding unrelated objects it can right-size materials that are too long, and add some thread spine into those that are too fragile, as a double strand of thread can add toughness to thin or brittle stems, ensuring that damage is no longer catastrophic and feathers no longer unwind.

It’s also exactly the kind of shaggy I’m looking for when I marry shad’s brightness with trout’s buggy, as unlike the gentle presentation of trout flies, these will be slapped on the water via shooting head and all the G – forces commensurate with a swearing angler and his double haul.

Mats_In_Loop “Dubbed Loops” have shown a bit of a resurgence of late, and have always worked well converting hair and fur into hackle for big nymphs. Less well documented is their ability to mix a variety of materials into a single strand, and with a judicious stroke of scissors, can offer new opportunities for feathers that are too big for normal attachment and winding.

Above is a tuft of Red Fox Squirrel, dyed teal, and Peacock Angelina that I’ll marry as the thorax of a caddis design. I’ve cast a dubbing loop around the shank and tied it off, and inserted the three materials as a single pinch. I’ll push them collectively up the thread close to the hook shank, then spin them within the loop until the thread tightens around the butts of all three materials.

In the photo above, the material on the left side of the thread will be the portion I’ll retain and wind onto the fly. The material to the right of the thread will be trimmed close to the thread once the thread has started securing it in the loop.

trimmed_buttsResizing materials that are too long for the hook shank is done by pulling only a fraction of the material through to the left side of the loop, just enough to match the length of the legs needed for the fly, trimming the balance when semi-secured.

At right is the loop beginning to spin the materials into a “hackle”. I’ve trimmed all materials on the right side of the thread and will continue spinning the loop until the materials can no longer be pulled from the thread.

semi_tamedI’ll attempt to persuade the materials to clump on one side with finger pressure or saliva, but as the materials have been spun like a rubber band, they will resist your efforts to tame them.

Instead I’ll focus on sweeping the material back as it’s wrapped onto the fly. This will minimize the amount of trapped fibers, as well as encourage the strands to sweep over the rear of the fly.

Touching up the thorax area with a bit of Velcro will add a hint of fuzzy  free trapped materials and assist them to meld into a cohesive collar as they sweep towards the tail.

Depending on the fly being tied, the distribution of fibers can be made to make either a symmetrical or asymmetrical hackle. Placing the fibers in a clump will yield the small amount of duck under the bug as shown below. Spreading the fibers out yield a traditional style hackle.

Green Caddis Shad Experimental

The completed experimental.  The transparent vinyl is wrapped over a base of flat gold tinsel, affording the abdomen a bit of “pop” and brightness. I’ve tied additional flies in pink and red just to see how traditional Shad colors fish with this caddis-style exterior.

Green trout-like shad flies

In Spring an Old Guy’s thoughts turn to divorce, or the encroaching Bony Silver Menace

The physics of it all dictate lighter and smaller, the biology suggests buggier, and all the painstaking research says we’ve only scratched the surface of their depravity, as their tastes might range from drab to the ridiculously bright.

Physics because there’s a lot less water and rather than flinging high atomic weight, I may drag bottom with bead chain. Smaller because the absence of all that water suggests the prey may well be discriminating – shy of big flies in that shallow water …

Biology because the off season led to a wealth of papers on the American Shad, their eating habits, and my surprise to find out that the reigning angling wisdom on what and how they eat – has no basis in reality.

… and while they might seine all manner of smallish creatures in the salt and brackish estuaries (mostly small shrimp from stomach samples), the oddity of their attraction to bright colors may well be that of an expatriate dining on foreign cuisine – snacking on visual cues or the opportunistic feed when an item resembles something familiar.

Which is all that a burgeoning fly inventor need know … armed with a pocketful of bright will still work, but a cornucopia of experimental caddis and mayflies, minnows, moths, tee shirts, tennis balls, and discarded Doritos, might actually yield a Secret Fly of Complete Shad Dominance (SFoCSD), something that’s rumored to have surfaced many times in as many zip codes.

Number10OJ

I’ve got a pocketful of unknown and untested and am proof against both parking lot catcalls and all-knowing snigger. I’ve got buggy and somber, drab and motile, bright and bug-shaped, and every other combination a fertile mind can summon …

… and now I’ve got them in trout sizes, out of respect for low water …

You lads can flee to elevation and keep all those fragile trout company while I defend the local waters from the Silvery Invasive Menace surging upriver from the deep. All those bony palates, buck teeth, and feelers, paired with loose morals and lower standards, exactly what’s needed to keep a fly dresser thinking he’s distilled pure genius to a hook shank.

Six hundred things edited out of Fly Fisherman as the Zip Code wasn’t exotic enough No 311 & No 288

Flat tinsel is one of the many thousands of fly tying tasks that are intuitive in concept and unduly difficult in practice. Tinsel in past decades was flat metal, which sliced through fingertips with only slightly more resistance than tying thread.

The switch to Mylar eased the bloodletting and ended tarnish, but had the same problems with its application. Now you had to remember to tie in the color opposite what the body would be, as one side was silver and the other gold, which would result in the only cost savings two hundred years of fly tying has ever produced.

gold_side_facing

Figure 1: Gold side facing you means the fly will have a silver body

Tinsel bodies are quite common in trout streamers and steelhead flies, and can be tamed with three simple tricks; always use the widest tinsel available to cover the most with the least number of wraps, never overlap turns, and always double wrap the body, never attempt to single wrap the fly.

Tinsel is cheap – there’s little advantage in hoarding it.

Never overlap turns of tinsel

Figure 2: No turns overlap

If even the slightest overlap occurs it will create a “bubble” or air gap that will eventually slip to reveal the thread wraps beneath. Always wrap the first layer so you can see thread color between turns.

Final layer added, no overlap

Figure 3: Final layer of tinsel added

There are no overlaps on the upper layer of tinsel either. Because the two layers are at right angles to one another, no thread is visible despite our leaving rather obvious gaps on the bottom layer.

In the above “Comet” style of steelhead fly, I used an under-the-tail-wrap to change direction and bring the second layer forward to the eye. This makes the change of direction seamless, and lifts the tail away from the hook bend.

As an additional step, one that I’ve been asked about, is how the “tip-first” style of hackling subsurface flies can accommodate a second color.

Comet’s have a mixed orange and yellow hackle, and “folding” hackle so it drapes back naturally, precludes a second color – given that winding it forward would bind the first to the shank.

Instead, treat both feathers as if they were a single feather. Size the hackles by spreading the barbs perpendicular to the stems with your fingers. Place one on top of the other, and using either the thumb (top feather) or forefinger (bottom feather) slide the two along each other until the stroked barbules are the same length, as below:

slide the two feathers until the barbules are the same length

Figure 4: Both orange and yellow fibers match in length

A better view below, showing the two hackles now tied in, yet spread from the stem so you can see they’re of identical length …

A better look at the two feathers barbules

When gripped thusly, the forefinger controls the tension on the bottom feather, and the thumb controls stem tension on the top color. Note how the stroked perpendicular barbules are of the same raw length.

Now all that remains is to keep the stems together under equal tension when you stroke them at right angles with your scissors, or saliva equipped fingers, whatever is your favorite tool for moving the fibers to the same side.

Fibers now stroked roughly to the same side

Figure 5: Fibers stroked roughly to the same side

I use the edge of my scissors scraped towards me to break the backs of all the fibers and push them to a single side. Fingers finish the task, by stroking anything unruly back into line. Note how close the two stems are kept, they might as well be a single stem.

Now wind two forward

Figure 6: Winding both colors forward

This technique ensures the proper balance of colors as one turn of orange yields one turn of yellow, and the mixed color is exactly half of each. Adjust the stems over lumps or bumps using the finger that controls the wayward stem – bring it back in line with the other so they wind as a single object.

The completed comet style

Figure 7: The completed “Comet” style

This style of hackle does away with the overly large head caused by wrapping over the “dry fly style” hackling and forcing it down and over the back of the fly. A fly tied with this style hackle can have a head no larger than a trout fly if done correctly.

Note how the sizing we did at the beginning yields flues of equal length for both colors? No more guesswork needed to pick two hackles, simply slide them around until the flue length matches.

Using the right “style” of hackle for the task is a very important distinction a tyer makes on his path to mastery. When he understands why he abandons “butt-first dry fly hackle” for his underwater flies, it’s a real milestone in his formative process.

Six hundred things edited out of Fly Fisherman because the Zip Code wasn’t exotic enough – No.335

I’ve always assumed that questions about the mechanics of dubbing stem from the preponderance of fly tiers that attempt to learn the craft from books, Youtube, or blog posts like this one.

Most of us contract the fly fishing bug from someone else, and while casting and simple tasks like knots are shared from one angler to the next, fly tying and its legacy of dead animals parts is an individual journey for most.

I feel the mechanical ritual described to apply fur to thread is made overly complex in most books, and seeing someone else do it is much more enlightening, especially if you can ask questions.

The neophyte usually peers from an audience at some dignitary tying at a club dinner, who’s so enraptured by a future step as to scrub a mass of fur across thread without really describing much other than what preparation is needed for the feather he’s mounting next.

It’s a step glossed over not so much out of meanness or ill temper, so much as the journey fly tyer assumes dubbing is a simplicity shared by all watching, which is not always true.

Like all things, there is a right way and many wrong ways to attempt the fur on thread nightmare.

  1. Dubbing isn’t applied by cutting an enormous gout of fur from the hide and dipping your fingers in pancake batter to make it stick.
  2. Dubbing isn’t scrubbing fingers together in both directions, it’s scrubbing fingers together in one direction only. Tiers scrubbing fingers in both directions are attempting to make the hole the hook made hurt less.
  3. Commercial waxed thread offers no advantage getting fur to stick to thread, that’s because the wax used by Danville and other vendors is meant to plug bobbin barrels, and is much too hard to be tacky.
  4. Dubbing isn’t applied, nor can it be tamed, by attacking the middle of the fur with freshly licked fingers dripping with training saliva. Training saliva is only available after drinking milk, the rest of us use mousse.

Most of your trouble starts with your dependence on packaged dubbing. Grabbing a bag of fur allow you to pull an ounce or two as easily as the merest hint of color. Mirroring your drive-thru habits, you insist on supersizing your helping – whose bulk will fight you at each and every subsequent step.

Seen_Through

The proper amount should be transparent to the eye, and objects can be seen through the dubbing over its entire bulk.

The second portion is understanding that dubbing cannot be wrapped around thread until it is anchored to the thread at the top, with the balance of the fur then spun around the thread as the fingers move down the fur.

top_anchored

You can’t spin a rubber band tight, or anything tight, unless one end is “immovable” first, dubbing is no different.

It’s a devilishly simple and completely deceptive task, something that even video cannot impart completely, given that sub-steps of “hint of fur” and “anchored” are unknown to the novice, making the overall process simple yet completely foreign.