'Blue Dun'

[Deezel]

Would someone define this color without resorting to a circular description/definition? Is it dark or light? Does it have a visible tint of blue? Is it a pale dun? Does it have a bronze tint? Does it have any blue in it at all?

Deezel

[flybinder]

Man, sometimes defining Blue Dun, is like defining "Olive". (I think, looking for the right chenille once, I found 37 shades of "olive" and all were purported to be "The real olive color!?).

Anyhooo, to me........
I'd consider it a "dark color", I suppose, when compared to other colors in the hackle color spectrum, like ginger, yellows,etc.

I've never noticed any "bronze" tinting to it, whatsoever, to answer that part of your question. My necks and saddles,have a blended color like "blue-gray", as opposed, say, to regular straight, dyed, gray hackle.

Also, a "quality" blue dun neck, and/or, saddle will have a slight "sheen or gloss" to its hackles whereas straight gray seldom does.

[psyfly11]

blue Dun should not have any "blue" in it. It should be a smoky gray. Light or dark or anywhere in between.

[Panman]

In the Fly Tying Section of FAOL there is a section that gives fly tying terms. Below is the definition of Blue Dun.

Tim


Blue Dun Hackle:
Light gray usually, can be most any shade of gray. May have bluish tinge, which can vary from a pale blue to a dark gun-metal blue. The darker shades are referred to as "Iron blue dun."

[Scientist]

Would someone define this color without resorting to a circular description/definition? Is it dark or light? Does it have a visible tint of blue? Is it a pale dun? Does it have a bronze tint? Does it have any blue in it at all?

Deezel

Deezel,

The problem is that "blue dun" describes a color of an insect (the mayfly) and chicken feathers. Neither of these two thing are created in a consistant color. In an effort to "define" blue dun I would say it is an even, silver gray color. If you are tying and trying to get the proper color, look at the color of the insects in your location and try to match the color when you go to buy materials.

[peregrines]

^^^^^^^^^^^
Well said. Hope Denny weighs in too.

Here take a look:

http://www.hookhack.com/dries.html

If you scroll down you'll see pics of two flies, Blue Dun and a Blue Quill tied with "blue dun". Maybe it's the lighting, or they share some mystical property, but one is light and one is medium-darkish to my way of thinking. But the one thing they do share is an absence of bronze/red/ginger/brown, often found in hackle labeled ?dun? and are more of ?silver gray? in different shades.

Here are some links for a look at various duns from Whiting, Hoffman, and Conranch. None are labeled "Blue Dun".

http://www.whitingfarms.com/colorchart/

You'll notice Whiting dyes white hackles to different shades of "dun", just more or less monochromatic grays. If you scroll down a bit you'll see pics of natural ?dun? in various shades too and with casts of other colors.

Hoffmann has a natural ?honey dun? and dyed duns:

http://www.eflytyer.com/materials/hoffman.html

Denny and Liz at Conranch have some very nice natural dun (which I would actually think of as a "pale watery blue dun" which just goes to show you the difficulties of using words to describe colors as opposed to eyeballs). They also have very buggy looking shades of "honey dun" and "red dun" too:

http://www.conranch.com/capes.html

Metz has a ?light blue dun? which I would consider a medium dun, a ?medium dun? which to my eye has a bronze cast ?honey dun? look, and ?Dun? which I would consider very dark ?iron blue dun?, as well as ?rusty? and ?chocolate duns? with a brown cast.

http://www.umpqua.com/pc-1583-128-ha...lor-chart.aspx

If you?re an experienced tyer, the bottom line to sort through the subjective labeling, you have two choices. Either pick it out yourself to get the shade of light, medium, or dark ?dun? you want (and check for sizes, twisted stems, feather volume, and presence or absence of ?tint?), or talk to Denny, or someone else you can trust, over the phone, let him know what you?re looking to do, and have him pick one or two out for you, as opposed to buying sight unseen over the internets.

Many prefer the look of natural duns compared to dyed. I do too. It just looks like it would work harder for me than dyed to get a fish, and I need all the help I can get. Really, I suppose it's mostly an aesthetic thing, and can?t say it really makes a difference, just what I prefer to look at on my bench, as opposed to monochromatic shades of gray, which don?t have the sheen and subtle differences in shade and tint as the naturals.
If you're new to tying and trying to imitate naturals, which for the most part have stopped hatching now, ask in a fly shop about the shades and sizes of hatches in your area in terms of ?gray? When ?dun? starts getting thrown around, ask to see flies (preferably locally tied to match naturals) with the color they mean to clear up potential confusion. BWO's for example (really a series of hatches of different species throughout the season) can range from very light shades, to dark slate gray. And a lot of other hatches are matched with different shades of gray, often referred to as just "dun" in recipes.
A medium gray cape might be a good compromise to be able to tie a range of sizes of different insects calling for ?dun? hackle. But what's the point of keeping it simple when you can really complicate things as an excuse to get more stuff?

Depending on hatches and their hook sizes in your area, and how much you plan on tying, and how nuts you want to get, you may want to get more than one shade of gray, may be 2 capes After all, it's only money?Or a cape and a saddle to "save" a few bucks over the cost of 2 capes if you don?t ?need? to tie in smaller sizes on both.

For example, here?s a dark cape? light saddle combo that may or may not match stuff where you are. The dark gray ?dun? cape to tie 10- 22 and a very light gray ?dun? saddle for mostly 14-16 and some 18's. Together they would cover many early and late season BWO's (16-22), Dark Hendricksons (14-16), Quill Gordon (12-16), Isonychia (10-14) and early season black caddis (12-16), early black and brown stones (14-16) using the dark cape, and PMD's (12- 1, Sulphurs (12-16), some larger mid-summer BWO's (14-16), and gray Caddis (14-1 from a light saddle.... and you could mix the two to get medium for a Light Hendrickson (14-16), Red Quill 12-16, and Pale Evening Duns (14-1...

Of course $12 spread out over 3 patches of coastal deer hair for compara/sparkle duns could cover you for light, medium, and dark ?blue dun? for $12.

peregrines

[Jim Slattery]

Blue Dunfrom what I've read and observed is a medium Gray dun with a bluish cast. If you have ever seen a Blue Andulisian (sp?) rooster, the body feathers are Blue Dun. Finding a rooster Cape that natural color is a rare event. I would bet that less than 1% of all of Whiting's Hebert /Miner Dun Capes raised in a year are that color. It is a very rare color. I would also bet that there are more Cree's raised than true 'Blue Dun".
Jim

[Deezel]

Thanks all for your comments. What prompted me to ask was somewhat rhetorical since from all I read, heard, and seen over the years (45+) that I've been tying and collecting materials has led me to believe there's no clear cut definition of the color of hackle refered to as 'blue dun'. I can say without any exaggeration that I've seen and handled over a 1000 necks, natural and dyed, said to be some sort of 'dun' including the famous 'blue dun'. I've spoken to breeders about it. And yet, I'm still at a loss as to what it is that it looks like. Oh well, I guess the necks I have, the dark, medium, light, those that fall between those 3 shades, sandy, bronze, flaked, grizzly, splash, natural as well as dyed, the ones with a slight shade of brown, and other 'dun' necks will have to do. After all, we're talking about qualities that we humans see and covet. The trout, well they probably don't care.

Deezel

[WarrenP]

I think this thread is dun!!!! Sorry, I could not help myself and lost control!

[peregrines]

Deezel,

This is overly simplistic, but here?s how I think of it FWIW. Chicken feathers reflect black and brown pigments or their suppression, plus structural color (like a drake mallard head) which gives black hackle that iridescence. Basically think of running a feather tip first through a dot matrix printer with black and brown ink. Turn on both colors to high, and print you?ve got black (since it overpowers the brown). Turn off black you get brown. Turn both off you get white. You can get patterns like grizzly, cree, furnace and badger, and different shades like ginger and red, shades and patterns like barred ginger, and random looking stuff like variants depending on how intense and where you spray on the feather.

Most ?Duns? reflect an even mist of both brown and black over white, and vary in intensity from light to dark resulting in honey duns, red duns, etc.. A ?blue? dun reflects an even mist of black over white with the effective suppression of brown. Shades will vary from light to dark based on the intensity of the spray from the printer.
Since the whole pigmenting process is controlled by multiple genes, some of which are dominant, others recessive, others incompletely dominant, and interact with each other to varying degrees, the ability to get some patterns (like cree) or degree of intensity in some shades while controlling the spray pattern is very difficult, and to a large degree unpredictable. And simply crossing parents with the same desirable traits often doesn?t work and requires back crossing with something else (Supposedly cree x cree never equals cree offspring). It seems like the various duns reflecting browns are a lot easier to get.

So, if you can suppress the brown, spray an even fine mist of black by controlling the Andalusian pigment gene, eliminate splotching, plus whatever structural qualities lead to desirable refraction, you?ve got ?blue?, and depending on the density of the mist (or how fast you pulled the feather out?) will determine the shade of light vs dark. The difficulty and the inherent variability makes it very difficult to point to a ?standard?, and seems like each ?blue dun? is more like a one off.

I?m sure Denny has a more intelligent explanation, but he must be off setting the printer to ?cree? .

peregrines