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

I was reminded last night that I hadn’t been completely forthcoming. The fly shops call it “holographic tinsel” – typically charging between $1.50 and $2 for a small spool.

Joanne’s Craft’s calls it “Sulky Holoshimmer” and rather than the traditional size spool, sells it in the elongated bindle for $3.95 for 250 yards. It’s only available in the fine trout sizes (1/32”) under that label – but a little digging will likely find our medium and large variant.

That’s nearly seven spools of the fly shop size, which cuts your cost down to fifty seven cents per spool (30m).

I took the above picture at Joann’s showing 48 different colors. On closer examination I see duplicates, so it appears more than one size is available from the craft store. I was harried – and throwing elbows to keep the mob back, and may have missed this important detail …

Here’s the life-size view so you can see the pattern and effects. Copper (bottom left), Cranberry, and dark Green (top two) are especially suited for those oddball trout patterns that require a little flash.

I love these spools. The top lifts up exposing a small track that the tag end can be wound around – once the top is pressed down your the tag end is completely secure. Consider saving these spools once the tinsel is exhausted – I’d decant other tinsels or chenille onto them so you don’t tarnish the old metal style (with rubberbands)  – and you can avoid the unfettered “mylar explosion” of the newer tinsels.

In this economy we’re making war on the two dollar item …

Tags: Holographic Tinsel, Sulky Holoshimmer, fly tying materials, bulk fly tying materials, war on two dollar items, fly tying

Singlebarbed reader “TwoRod” has pointed us all towards saving a few bucks. His comment about 1/4” clear elastic as a substitute for the commercial “Super Shrimp Foil / Scud Back” products is the best replacement I’ve seen yet.

I went to eBay to see whether it can be purchased cheaper than the retail link Tworod included – and there’s a couple of truckloads available from a vendor (eBay store link) in New York.

Six bucks for 50 yards (auction link) with a satin finish. It appears tougher and much longer lived than the commercial products I’ve tried – and may last multiple seasons. The satin finish takes permanent felt pen quite well, allowing you to fiddle with colors and patterns with minimal fuss.

I picked up a 100 yards of the material hoping I wouldn’t have to purchase it every season like the finer tippets.

Even that may have been a little ambitious as the resulting pile is about the size of half a loaf of bread.

I’ll string a hank on a tree limb to gauge its resistance to sunlight degradation, then hope I can impart some of that zeal to some fishing buddies to relieve me of a goodly chunk.

50 yards is plenty, and if prone to significant oxidation you’ll wish you bought half that. The eBay flavor is closer to 3/8” or 1/2” in width – slice it down the middle and it’ll make two strips of the appropriate width.

Tags: Czech nymphs, Scud Back, Super Shrimp Foil, fly tying materials, fly fishing, oxidation, clear elastic strip, eBay

Most of you swore next season would see you with fly boxes bulging – and absolutely nothing has been accomplished despite the mighty oaths to the contrary.

I’ve always used the Exorcist model of offseason restock – wherein book or article induced “possessions” fight over my immortal soul, and the result is one less agonizing chore.

The last two were induced by Reed Curry and the Czech Nymphing tome. Reed’s stimulus I’ve not yet shown as I’m in no mood to be laughed at – and while some of Czech patterns have been revealed, it’s some of the materials that caused my jaw to grow stern …

Scud Back or Magic Shrimp Skin is a material that costs ungodly coin, and simply needs to have its source identified before I can sleep nights. Small packs costing $5 or $10 are the bane of fly tying – and while I substitute vinyl sandwich bags freely – I’m still tormented by the search.

The material is a 2 mil vinyl tape (or sheet) that is quite stretchy, semi transparent, and possesses a gloss finish on one side and dull on the other.

Permanent felt pens and a Glad sandwich bag are my favorite substitute – just sneak into the mail room and use their paper cutter to make all the strips you need for less than penny…

Sandwich bags are about 2 mil thick, and the larger Zip Loc flavors are about 3 mil, either works wonderfully.

Teflon tape (for wrapping plumbing pipe threads) works elegantly, but it’s a might slippery and comes only in white.

Construction flagging tape is 2 mil and has all the florescent colors. It’s the tape tied to the surveyor stakes – and depending on roll size and width it’s about $2 for a couple hundred feet. It also has no adhesive backing – which is a plus…

Vinyl tape is mostly solid colors (link is to 6 mil to show colors) – but transparent solids are available. Sold in many thicknesses it’s available in 2 mil and used to mark electrical wires, adorn hula hoops, and a wide variety of other uses. The adhesive can be removed with toluene or alcohol (depends on the type of adhesive used) and yields shiny on one side and dull on the reverse.

Available in sizes from 1/16” to 3” wide. It may be best suited as the strips only need to be about two inches long for a completed fly. A wide tape would allow you to cut each strip across the tape rather than lengthwise and

Electrician’s tape comes in a dozen colors besides black, and while mostly sold in 7 mil, other sizes are available. It works admirably as a Czech nymph carapace, as will the transparent Kapton tape – used to insulate circuit boards from solder.

Most of these tapes are made for outdoor use and are UV treated to resist the effects of sunlight. Magic Shrimp Foil and their ilk strike me as having the same issue as latex, a one season fly. Open your box the following winter to find the material cracked and in little pieces.

Above is florescent pink surveyor’s tape tied as a large caddis pupa. You’ll be giggling no doubt – but once Shad season starts in earnest it may dawn on you that the Czech style may be used for something other than trout …

… it’s all part of the Exorcist method, get possessed then tie everything that way including dry flies …

I may run this through the American to see what them steelhead think …

Tags: flagging tape, Czech nymph, cheapskate, magic shrimp skin, scud back, vinyl tape, fly tying materials, glad sandwich bags,

It’s unfamiliar ground for a fellow that shops with coupons, but after suffering another glue-based indignity, it was time to plow some dollars into the problem.

Head cement. Thinned to penetrate, odiferous, and requiring equally caustic thinners to remove  from things it wasn’t meant to glue …

… because eventually you’ll get cocky. Coaxing a feather to remain in a certain position, you uncork the cement to lay in a generous dollop, using the tingle of “spider-sense” to replace the stopper.

It’s not so bad when the entire bottle empties into your crotch. It’s mostly room temperature and your careful thinning is rewarded by an even saturation of the pants enroute to a better bond with those sensitive areas below.

No sudden chill or shock to the system, no nerve ending screaming in torture – all that comes later when you’re attempting to separate undergarments from everything nearby …

… all of which are hairy and sensitive.

It’s job induced peril. If you tie this will happen. You will regret it.

After the top two layers of skin return, I’ll be in a better mood – in the meantime I’ll marvel at my gleaming technological cement reservoir (and the hole it left in my pocketbook) – and consider its purchase cheap.

It’s a Dyna-King cement reservoir, and has lifetime written all over it.

Milled from a single block of Aluminum it’s weighty enough to avoid tipping over, holds about half a bottle of cement, and has an “O-ring” seal on the bodkin to prevent leaks or air penetration.

The cost is $39.95, which is steep – but after I bench tested the shape with my hammy hands, I’m positive that I won’t be able to tip the cement jug with a careless or hurried move.

The picture at right shows the reservoir ready for filling. Grease has been applied to the thread to prevent cement from penetrating into the threads and sealing the unit.

They suggest periodically replenishing the barrier with petroleum jelly or light grease.

The below picture describes its intended use. The loaded bodkin is pulled from the top assembly and returned for refill or until its next use.

The O-ring provides the tension for removal and replacement and ensures an airtight seal when the bodkin is in place.

This is one of those niggling long term issues that’s not enough of a problem to warrant an immediate fix, and just enough of a disaster that you curse yourself for not addressing sooner.

I’ve used a variety of hollowed out wooden blocks that were eventually pressed into a multi purpose role. Great for drying flies – but to avoid clippings raining down onto fresh cement, the tendency was to move the block further away.

Guaranteeing you’ll slurp cement on the desk surface as the loaded bodkin traveled between reservoir and fly.

Getting the container too close meant banging it while spiraling a long segment of chenille or hackle – which was just as bad.

The Dyna-King cement reservoir is about 3/8” shorter than the glass bottle flavor, and quite a bit heavier than wood. It may survive close to the vise base without discharging the contents accidentally. The tension on the O-ring is sufficient to hold the bodkin firmly in place when upended, and you can knock over the entire assembly with bodkin in place without a spill.

… which may buy me enough time to regrow some hair, and allow the swelling from the mixture of toluene and pumice to subside a bit.

Full Disclosure:  I paid full retail for the device.

Tags: Dyna-King cement reservoir, toluene, head cement, lacquer, bodkin, fly tying misery, The Fly Shop, fly tying tools