Straightening curved hair

[Ray Kunz]

Many times we are confronted with finding body hair or bucktail that is not as straight as we would want. I?m sure I haven?t discovered a new way to solve the problem but I?ve never seen it described before. So here goes.
1. As you would normally do, pull a bundle of hair squarely away from the hide to get the tips acceptably even. Clip the bundle and pull out the unwanted underfur.
2. Now, holding the tips of the bundle between your left thumb and forefinger similarly grasp the butts of the hair bundle between your right thumb and forefinger.
3. Here comes the neat part. Slowly roll each thumb against its matching finger as you would if rolling a homemade cigarette. When you do this you are rolling many of the individual hair fibers partway about its own axis so that they are not all bending in the same direction. Now, bending in opposing directions within the bundle of curved fibers, the bundle averages out as quite straight.
Try it. It works for me.

[TyroneFly]

Ray,

Thanks for the tip. I have several elk hairs with a slight curve that I have been avoiding. Hopefully your tip will work on these.

[whatfly]

Well, as you say, this strictly speaking does not straighten the hair, it justs makes a bundle of hair that is curved many directions. More useful for bucktail than deer hair in my experience.

For deer/elk/moose hair, best solution I've found is to discard the patch of curved hair (or donate to worthy cause) and find a patch of straight hair. Perhaps not as cost effective, but life is too short to spend struggling with inferior materials if a better product is readily available.

Just a thought...

[Bob S]

Al Beatty showed me this: For Elk or deer hair, cut 1 flies worth the hair off the hide. Keep the fibers together, all curved in the same direction. Take your thumbnail and pinch the hair with your thumbnail and index finger going up toward the tips about 1/8 of an inch each time. Pinch the hair on the backside of the curve. Works pretty good. You can even comb the underfur out and then do the pinch. Stack it after you made 8 pinches or so.

Bob

[Gnu Bee Flyer]

I do much the same thing when mixing two or more colors of Pheasant tail for my tri colour Pheasant tail nymph. It mixes the colours evenly and evens them out.

Never thought to do it with my curved elk hair. I just went out and bought a patch of straight stuff.

[bones]

http://www.troutflies.com/rofft/hair/hair.shtml

[Normand]

Take your thumbnail and pinch the hair with your thumbnail and index finger going up toward the tips about 1/8 of an inch each time. Pinch the hair on the backside of the curve.

thats an old technique that works to straighten curved feather stems/quills also

[rons81]

Great tip. This old dog can learn new tricks. Thanks Ray.