Clay,

I know exactly what you are going through. I, also, put my lead on a material bobbin which has a larger hole. You can transfer your chenille from the cardboard to an empty thread spool and use it on a material bobbin. The reason for doing a bobbin for the lead and the chenille is that you have no waste. If you do either one by hand, you will be throwing away the excess which could be anywhere from 1/2" and longer. Pretty soon, you have thrown away a lot of lead and chenille that you paid for. If you do not tie a lot of flies, it probably makes no difference, but, I hate to throw away material and I hate having all those little pieces of chenille and lead lying on my tying table thinking I will use them some day. I find that the smaller diameter lead is the one that wants to break off before I am through wrapping. Untwisting it probably does not work because once it is twisted it is weakened. When wrapping this smaller wire I concentrate on wrapping without allowing the bobbin to put a twist in the lead wire. It is a lot like wrapping/palmering a hackle where you concentrate on keeping the hackle from twisting which causes the hackle to be sticking out in all directions instead of all sloping back. When I make sure to wrap the lead and not allow the twist, I have no problems.

Hope this helps...