Material smells

[ragincajun]

So the room where I tie has an odor from the feathers and furs. What do you do? I have them double ziplocked but that only helps a tad bit.

[Ron Eagle Elk]

What kind of odor are we talkin about here? My materials don't smell, except for a hint of moth crystal smell. You could have some materials that were incorrectly preserved.

REE

[ragincajun]

Its not a rancid smell. Just a slight odor, but you can deifinitly smell it.

[GrayGhost]

ragin is it sort of a wet dog smell???

[ragincajun]

I guess you could say that. It smells natural but wondering maybe store in cedar cigar boxes would help?

[jeffro]

If you are using a swamp cooler instead of Refrigerated air in your house with salted Deer-Hide or bird skins, the moist air will soften and ralax a salted skin and will start gettin smelly and if in zip lock bags that are slightly opened or out of the bag.....
I just REsalt em really good or Borax will or should do the trick.....does for me anyway.
I have noticed that some Squirrel Tails if not dried good will get real bad smelly

[trout hunter 77]

i once had an odor i thought was from my stash of fur and feathers. turned out to be the 5 minute epoxy i had on the shelf, even sealed tight you could smell it in the room.
i put them in a cigar box then in the closet, seemed to do the trick

[EdD]

Try placing newspaper against the back of hackle capes and saddles, and any skins that you won't mind a little ink bleed on, and leave for a few days. That will help clear away excess fat, oil, and moisture from the skins. Note that you might want to place the papers in a plastic bag with moths balls/crystals to make sure that there aren't any mites that ould transfer to your tying materials. Or you might not bother.

Ed

[billhouk]

I have some capes and saddles that are a bit greasy. I swap out the paper they are mounted on periodically. I also put pieces of dog flea collar in the containers that I keep the bagged materials in. Slight oder but certainly not strong. Then again my ENT says I've had my nose broken one time too many.

[Steven McGarthwaite]

I store all my natural fly tying materials in various sizes of plastic freezer storage bags (thicker than the normal plactic storage bags), I use card stock paper for backing, and I place a short strip (1-inch in lenght) of a dog flea and tick collor in the bag with the material. I then store these bags by type of material in large heavy plastic tubs (that have tight seal covers) inside the tube I place another 1-inch strip of a dog flea and tick collar. The flea and tick collars last forever! There is no smell from the collars, unlike using cedar or moth balls.

If I have a cape or feather material that has picked up a scent, I was it by hand in a tub of water with a 10% solution of chlorine bleach (9 cups water:1 cup of bleach), I rinse the material remove as much water from the material as possible and then lay it on layers of newspaper to dry (replacing the newspaper with dry pages. Finally when I am satisfied that it is completely dry and there is no odor, I place it back into a new freezer bag, and insert the flea & tick collar peice.

This is a fly tying tip that Al Campbell recommended in one of his fly tying series.