Guard hairs

All about flies Fly Tying
1

Does anyone know of a good way to save and store them when cleaning out a batch of fur. I just cleaned a batch of muskrat for adams’s and realized I was throwing a lot of good tailing material in the trash. Past efforts to salvage them resulted in a tangled mess of loose unaligned hairs in a baggie that never gets opened. It’s just so much easier to cut new bunch of fur and get a neat usable stack of hair.

all leaders tangle; mine are just better at it than most. Jim

2

film cannisters?

3

rainbowchaser,

You bring up a very good point and now that I have given some thought to it, the only possible solution I can come up with is maybe putting a piece of double sided stickey tape on your fly tying table somewhere and as you grasp the guard hairs, you could just stick the ends to the tape. When needed for tailing material you could possibly just reach up and remove the amount needed. I know this is not much of a solution, but, in my mind at the present time, that was a consideration. If I come up with something better, I will post it.

Warren

4

Rainbowchaser,
When I have asked tyers who are much more experienced than I am about shaving a large patch of fur, they always tell me that the first thing they do is cut a strip of the patch off and leave it intact. They save that piece and pull the guard hairs out of it to use when needed, then they shave the remaining part. They use nature’s own guard hair storing system.
Joe

5

joe,

Thanks for the input. I like your solution a whole lot better than mine.

Warren

6

Chuck Stranahan stacks with a test tube…maybe they would work for storage…

or how about those plastic tubes that hold water for delivered flowers…even come with a cap?

7

Thanks guys I think Joe has the right idea. I’m just too cheap to throw anything away that might be useful. I’m still working on using up the hide from a muskrat my dog killed twenty years ago and I will probably still have some of it left when I die so I don’t know why I’m worrying about conserving it.

all leaders tangle; mine are just better at it than most. Jim