Coffee Grinder and Hairs Mask ?

[waynep]

I bought two hares masks, one normal color and one olive for hares ear flies. In talking to Chris Helm, who I bought one from, he mentioned using a coffee grinder to prep the mask hair. I am not familiar with using a coffee grinder.

Which part of the mask do you use?

I assume I can spend some time cutting off the hair, and prep'ing and bagging it for later use . . .

Do I just dump it in the grinder? How much should I grind it? How fine?

Other advise things I missed?

-wayne

[Eric-WD]

Some people use different parts of the mask for different flies, I'm lazy I shave the mask with a beard trimmer then put about a table spoon full at a time in the grinder and mix, it makes great dubbing. I have also used the coffee grinder on rabbit, mink, and mixing different colors of these to get different colors of dubing.

Here is a link to a much better explanation of the traditional way to use a hares mask than I can write, I highly recomend the book that this is an excerpt from.

http://www.maineflyfishing.com/lt%20...%20wet/wet.htm

Eric

[James Smith]

Wayne,

Many people including myself use a coffee grinder to blend their dubbing material. To do this you need an inexpensive coffee grinder which can usually be picked up for $10-$12. Simply cut off the hair and mix it up in the grinder. I try to keep the materials I use in the grinder around 3/8 inch long or less to prevent them from wrapping around the blades. Also, when you're blending dubbing in a grinder, use short busts on the grinder of around 2-3 seconds. This will help prevent materials from getting wrapped on the blades and over heating. This is especially true when you're using synthetic fibers. As far as what hair to use, I use the entire mask, but I believe the original GRHE was made from the fur found between the ears on the mask.

I think that you'll find that using a coffee grinder is a very easy way to mix your dubbing, especially if you have different blends that you like to prepare.

Hope this helps.

Jim Smith

[JohnScott]

Wayne -

Allen McGee's recent book on "Tying and Fishing Soft Hackle Nymphs" ( $16.47 at Amazon ) has a brief section on the hare's mask and how he uses five different sections of it for different purposes. Plus a bunch of other neat stuff, needless to say

If you get a chance, take a look. I'm sure you will find it helpful.

John

P. S. Allen is a member of the BB.

[flybinder]

Two, "small hints", I might add on using a coffee grinder for blending fur if you've never done, (or, as you say, "Never used a coffee grinder, before)....................
First, wipe your hands, the coffee grinder,(inside and out), with a simple, cheap, dryer sheet. It won't effect your fur, or, synthetics in any way and it will keep your blended furs from sticking to you, the grinder parts, etc.
(The coffee grinder and fur, make a great case of static electricity, when running even in very short bursts)

Second, when I mentiond to a new tyer, one time, "to get a cofee grinder to use for blending dubbing materials", he went out and purchased a "Burr Style" coffee grinder. He knew, nothing about grinders, and told the sales clerk "He wanted a really good coffee grinder". You want a "Blade Style", coffee grinder only. They're about $6 to $9.95 at the most.
(Sadly, the new tier also filled the hopper of his new "Burr" grinder, to the top with furs and flipped the switch. What a mess and no way to clean his particular grinder out, completely afterwards. He threw away $69.95. MY fault, I should have specified, I guess!?!)

[WarrenP]

Wayne,

"Do I just dump it in the grinder? How much should I grind it? How fine?"

Please understand that a coffee bean grinder does not grind or cut up dubbing material. The blades are not sharp for cutting. You will need to cut the material off of the Hare's Mask and put it into the coffee grinder. The grinder does nothing but mix the underfur with the guard hairs to give you some excellent dubbing material. Follow the advise that was given by keeping the length of the material around 3/8" and it will blend great. Just short bursts is all it will take. You can take yarn and cut it up into 3/8" lengths and the grinder will separate it and blend it together to form a nice soft dubbing material. You can mix different colors of yarn to vary the color of the yarn dubbing. Make sure to count how many pieces of each color of yarn you used to blend the color you wanted so that you can create it again. You can mix and blend many materials in the grinder. You can purchase one from Wal-Marts for around $12 to $19.

Have fun making your own dubbing.

[Mike-Connor]

I bought two hares masks, one normal color and one olive for hares ear flies. In talking to Chris Helm, who I bought one from, he mentioned using a coffee grinder to prep the mask hair. I am not familiar with using a coffee grinder.

Which part of the mask do you use?

I assume I can spend some time cutting off the hair, and prep'ing and bagging it for later use . . .

Do I just dump it in the grinder? How much should I grind it? How fine?

Other advise things I missed?

-wayne

Your mask should look something like this;



As you can see there is a large range of colours here. The textures of these hairs also vary depending on where you take them from.

This is the INSIDE of an ear and the OUTSIDE of the same ear





The ears etc are on square graph paper as I am working on a system for describing hair types and locations, but I am not finished yet.

OK. The mask has a number of more or less defined areas with specific types and colours of hair.

On either side of the nose, there are areas of reddish brown hair with very little underfur. Moving up the side of the mask, this changes to a light buff colour. As one moves further up, the hair tips become darker with a well defined dark brown to black band, and blue grey underfur.

Between the eyes and on the forehead is hair with light yellowish tips and a dark base.

At the base and between the ears is the "poll" this is a light reddish brown with pale tips, with underfur of the same colour.

At the base of the ears you have soft fur with light, often almost white fur with a varying length of dark base. Moving up the ear itself you have short dark hair with light tips. This is the hare recommended for the hare?s ear nymph. You can remove this by pinching it off with your thumb and finger nail. The whole side of the ear is covered with this hair.

On the leading edge of the ear, both sides, you have very light coloured guard hair. One side has much stiffer and longer hair than the other. You can use the long side for wings, tails etc, and the short side for light guard dubbing.

There are three other distinct areas on the outside of the ear. At the base of the ear you have short red/brown fur. Above this short white/buff fur, and then you have the tip of the ear which is very short almost black fur.

Moving to the inside of the ear. We have already covered the leading edges.We have much the same schem as on the outside, but there is much less hair and it is shorter. Otherwise similar. Again the easiest way to remove this hair is by pinching it out with your finger and thumb.

So, that very roughly covers it. I have been working on an article about this for quite some time, but I don?t know when I will finish it.

You can blend any of these furs together in pinches, or you can use each type of hair alone, or you can separate the guard hair and the underfur and use it separately.

There are many possible blend combinations. I have covered about twenty of these "standard" blends so far, but of course they are practically infinite.

Many people simply shave the mask and chuck the result in a blender, But this is a terrible waste of possibilities and the resulting blend, though quite excellent for some nymphs and wet flies, contains a very large percentage of underfur, and is thus less suitable for quite a few things, including dry flies.

You can dress dozens of completely different flies using a mask and ears. And you can also control the properties of those flies.

I hope that helped at least a bit. When I have the article finished I will post it of course.

For guard hair wings and the like, body fur is better simply because it is a lot longer and easier to handle. even short body guard hair is at least an inch long, which is quite ample for even the largest flies.

The guard hair from various locations also differs in colour according to location, and much of it also differs in colour along its own length. There may be three or more clearly defined colours or shades of colour on a single guard hair, If you want a specific colour, then just cut the colours off that you require, and put the others aside for something else.

TL
MC

[Mike-Connor]

The actual colours and shades involved vary according to where on the animal the fur is selected. This may vary from light grey through yellow to red to chestnut to dark brown or black guard hair tips, and the rest coloured accordingly. The underfur also varies considerably, but on the back for instance is a more or less uniform light grey or fawn colour. The whole thing also varies with the season when the animal was culled, it?s sex, and it?s state of maturity. Old jack hares give the finest dubbing, and the greatest variety.

This piece of pelt is partly used and shows the structure and colour of a piece of back hair;



It is often very convenient to divide a pelt up into pieces like this. Handling and selection are then a lot easier, but note where you got the piece from. You can just write this on the back of the piece with permanent marker.

In order to select dubbing for a specific function, floating, sinking, spiky, smooth, or a blend of these, one has to select and mix the various furs properly, or it wont work. Hardly anybody even knows how to do it, or why anymore, they just buy a plastic box or a polythene packet with a label on it which says "hare?s ear dubbing". For some flies , including wet flies, very specific types of dubbing may be required for correct imitation and operation.

I hope nobody serioulsy imagines that the suppliers scrape the ears and then discard the rest?



This medium tan blend has been made by taking three good pinches of the greyish fur from the rear back area of the skin, then taking a good pinch (the amounts are not critical, just make sure that your pinches are about the same size), of the reddish brown fawn coloured hair from the side of the belly,and placing it in a coffeee grinder. Blend this until well mixed. You may also use a ?blender? and mix the fur wet if desired. For various mixing techniques, see Dubbing

The hair from this animal has almost uncanny attracting properties for fish, when used correctly, and the range of colours on a single skin is more than enough for a very wide spectrum of flies. I have a large collection of hare skins, and the range between individual animals, obtained in various places, and at various times of the year, is also very large. If you also dye your own materials you can have a vast range of this material at your disposal for pennies.

Do try to get whole skins though, the patches which are offered for sale are usually rather small, and taken from one specific part of the animal?s skin. This limits the colour variations possible, and is usually too expensive anyway. All my skins were obtained either from road kills, or from local hunters, and cost just a bit of salt and borax and some work.

I skin the animals, including head and ears, which I do separately, and nail the skin fur side down to a board, it is then carefilly scraped clean of any fat etc. The skin is then liberally salted with a 1:1 mixture of salt and borax and left in a cool dry place to dry.



When completely dry, shake off the excess salt and borax. I then wash the skins carefully in a bath full of soap and water.

Dont leave the skins in the water too long, or all the hair will fall out! ( This is known as ?slip?). The skins are then carefully pressed out between the hands, and rinsed in clear running water to remove all traces of soap. They are then stretched slightly and placed skin side down on a few sheets of old newspaper to dry. When completely dry ( you may have to change the newspaper once or twice), the skins are beaten lightly on the skin side against the leg (wear old jeans!) and shaken to fluff up the fur again. If you wish, you may use a hair dryer to speed this operation up, but it is not necessary.

At this point the skin has a texture similar to parchment. That was it! Place the completely dry skins in a suitable container with a few crystals of napthalene or similar to deter bugs.

There are several ways of blending fur. The most efficient and convenient means for an amateur dresser to blend small quantities of dry fur is by using an electric coffee grinder.



These things are cheap enough to buy. If your wife does not like "hairy" coffee, do not use the one from the kitchen! Buy your own, and keep it with your fly-dressing gear.

The technique is quite simple, pinches or small bundles of fur are added to the machine, and blended using short bursts (switch on , count to five, stop and check the blend, continue as necessary ), until the required mix is obtained. This process also improves the dubbing qualities of the hair somewhat, especially some coarser furs, as the fibres are softened a little by the machine. Don't let the machine run too long, as this will damage the fibres, and the machine will tend to clog. If you add synthetics to your blends, be careful. as if the machine runs too long, they will melt and ruin the dubbing! Mix small amounts! If you put too much material in the machine, you will merely damage it. Also, comparatively small amounts of dubbing go a long way!

Keep notes on how you achieve your dubbing mixtures. A small sheet of paper with the amount used, and the colours is enough, I usually note whereabouts on the animal I got the fur as well. Place this slip of paper in the packet or container, or stick it to the outside. All the old time dressers did this, and usually they say where they got the fur from in their patterns.This also makes it a lot easier to repeat successful experiments. Remember that this is a dry blending method, and that the colours will look darker when the fur is wet. If you want to see thw wet colour, then use a ?blender?, and blend the fur wet. Just add pinches of fur to the blender container which should be about a third full of water. DON`T DO THIS WITH A COFFEE GRINDER!!!! It will short circuit.

HAD TO GIVE UP WITH THE REST, CHARACTER AND IMAGE RESTRICTIONS! You can find the whole article here;

http://www.sexyloops.co.uk/cgi-bin/t...6;hl=mike+conn

TL
MC

[Ray Kunz]

I realize that coffee grinders are in vogue right now for "dry blending" but don't discount the advantages of "wet blending". Here you use a kitchen blender with enough water to cover the trimmed hair and add just a drop of dishwasher detergent.(JUST A DROP). Stir it up and then drain and rinse the mix by dumping it into a screen strainer. From there you flip it onto a couple paper towels to dry.
Advantages IMHO are: !. No static electricity problems. 2. more uniform blending. 3. The final product will be in the form of a neat disk that will be easier to handle and store.
Give it a try. Regardless of the process you use just don't try blending LONG strands of torn-up synthetic yarn.

[fishyfranky_redux]

Yep, wet blending gives you the true shade. Since there are various advantages of staying married, I don't use the kitchen blender. Instead, I get a clear cup of water, fill it with stuff and mix it up until I see the shade I'm after. Some blends are just hand mixed but a cordless drill works too with a spade drill bit.

But I don't do this too often, mostly just to add some synthetic flash or colour to hare's fur.