I make and use a lot of dubbing brushes…usually with Ice Dub.
I know there will be differences… material to material… but in general I don’t get really bushy spikey brushes…and there are times that’s what I’d like to get.
I’m using a dubbing brush platform that has a 1/2" trough to hold the material and it seems that as the wire is twisted to be tight enough to hold the material securely the material rolls on itself and the brush ends up rather tight …not bad but there are times I would like to get some bushier.
Using a platform without that trough does not seem to make any difference.
are you inserting the material perpendicular or parallel to the wire?
lets say you cut the material into 1/2 inch long clumps and lay the clumps perpendicular to the wire, when you twist up the dubbing brush it should make the material spikey.
Also, once the material has been “captured” by the two pieces of wire, lift the wire up so that it completes the twisting without obstructing the material. This allows the material to spin around the wire a full 360 degrees making a nice spikey brush. If you do all the twisting with the wire right on the platform, it causes the material to be pushed up against the wire and the tips get tangled and twisted into the other material resulting in a tight rope-like brush. I realize that I did not articulate this very clearly, so please PM me if you have any questions at all.
Sometimes with material that consists of very long fiber strands, those fiber strands themselves will be spirally wrapped around the wire as it is being twisted. In doing this they will pick up and bind down adjacent fibers making a tight rope that you don’t want. Try chopping the dubbing material into shorter lengths. Good luck.