Hairy stuff!

Mammal hair or fur grows in cycles and actually goes through three separate phases: anagen, catagen and telogen. In the anagen phase, hair is actively and continuously growing. Afterwards, hair goes through a short period of growth recess (catagen) and enters into telogen in which hair stops growing.

Hair and fur also “wears” constantly on a live animal, and is shed and replaced at various intervals.

The exact control of the hair growth cycle in mammals is still not fully understood. Under normal conditions, it is predominantly controlled by photoperiod. Various animals in northern climes shed mainly in spring and autumn ( fall) . Other factors such as genetics, nutrition, and hormones also affect hair growth cycles.

Hair and fur are the same substance, ( mainly keratin). How they form, and their resultant properties are the result of genetic programming and environmental factors.

The terms "hair"and “fur” are technically completely interchangeable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fur

?Underfur? is the crinkly soft fur close to an animals skin. Often also referred to as ?down?. Mainly for insulation.It often varies in colour according to location on the animal, as does the guard hair, although some animals have ?single colour? fur.Also, many animals have very specialised fur. Mole fur for instance is ?unidirectional?.

Depending on the animal, and the location of the fur on its body, there may be little or no underfur present. In some locations, there is underfur, but no guard hair, and variations of these combinations are also extant.

?Guard Hair?, is the long hair which grows through the underfur, gives the animal protection, waterproofs it where required, and also defines its visible colour. However, the hair may vary considerably in colour along its length, and acording to its location on the animal.The tips might be white, and the base black or brown etc. Or various mottling or barring be apparent. The guard hair might be dark brown, and the underfur blue, or white, for instance.

There are various ways of removing hair from the skin, depending on what it is, and what you want to use it for. For many furs simply cutting it off with scissors works well. For other furs, various tools are useful, like a dubbing rake.For a lot of things, I like to just pinch the fur out with my thumb and fingernail. This only works if you take SMALL! Pinches, and you need a little practice as well, in order to avoid making a mess of the skin.One may also use good solid tweezers to remove hair.

Feathers have evolved to enable flight, among other things, and many of them have peculiar aerodynamic properties, even single fibres or bunches of fibres. Many flies dressed with feathers, either slips or bunches, will “Helicopter”, most especially if they are not very carefully balanced in size and shape. The weight distribution when flies are dressed “upside down” aggravates this propensity, and will often hopelessly twist and damage a fine tippet after a couple of casts. With few exceptions, feathers have interlocking fibres. like tiny zip fasteners, and these “catch the wind” It does not matter much what you do, this will always happen. Also, when on the bird, feathers are constantly preened to keep them in order, and reasonably waterproof. On water-birds this is absolutely vital. If you degrease a water bird, it becomes waterlogged immediately, sinks and drowns. This is why the major bird kills by oil spills are not caused by the oil itself, although this is shocking enough, they are caused by the detergent used to fight the spill, which degreases the birds, and so they drown.

Fur and hair have not evolved to enable flight, otherwise pigs, and a host of other things might fly! They have evolved primarily to keep their bearers warm and dry. Of course there are specific hairs with specific properties on fur bearing mammals, but not in the same manner or diversity as with feathers. Also, and of primary interest here, is the fact that hairs and furs have no interlocking fibres. This means that air moving over them merely goes “through” a bunch, “over” a clump, or " around" a single fibre. The hair does not offer resistance in any specific direction, and so wings and similar things on flies which are made from it don?t “helicopter”.

There are some exceptions. If one makes the wings too dense, or completely unbalanced ( One heavy wing and one very light one) then they may twist somewhat, but still not as badly as feathers, and this is in any case then a design fault, and not the fault of the material. This also mainly occurs on “stiff” hairs like deer hair and similar. Which is mainly why I don?t like deer hair for these flies. It is also far more difficult to use. Of course it works, and so do feathers, but not as well. A steam engine works very well, but I bet you drive a car with an internal combustion engine?

That is the basic explanation. One could go on at length about various properties here, but it would not really serve any useful purpose.

Tight Lines! ~ Mike Connor


Lepus europaeus. the European hare, absolutely indispensable to th fly-dresser! Very fast animals, they can run at speeds of over 50 mph ( in excess of 70 kph).

The skins shown in the photo above are road kill, from various times of year. This is one of the main advantages of road kill, one may obtain skins at different times of year.

The simplest, quickest, method of obtaining what many of the old time dressers considered to be perfect dubbing for many flies, is to cut the tips off the guard hair. Cutcliffe advised shaving the guard hair tips off with a dry razor, and discarding the rest!

The guard hair is the part of the hair which waterproofs and otherwise protects the animal. But just cutting this off is wasteful, and also severely limits the blend shades and types one may obtain. Pure guard hair is however required for a number of patterns. It will not soak up any water at all, and floats like a cork. It is also springy and spiky.

Many patterns call for darker hair.Most especially the “Gold Ribbed Hare?s ear”. The dubbing usually commercially supplied for this, and called “hare?s ear dubbing” is shaved and blended body hair which is quite unsuitable for that pattern. It is too light in colour because all the underfur is in the mix, it soaks up water, and it is often far too long in the staple. The staple is the average length of the longest hairs in the mix.

Indeed, as a rule, there is no “hare?s ear” in the commercial dubbing at all, the mask with ears is always sold separately, because that is mainly what people buy if they don?t buy a packet or box of the other stuff, which is usually mixed with plastic of unknown antecedents, which for all I know might be ground up old carpets!

Buying “ready mixed” “hare?s ear dubbing” is often a waste of money, as there is no way of knowing what is in it, or what to use it for. If you can?t get a piece of pelt, then buy Antron in the colour you require At least you know that will work. It may not be as effective, you can?t dress excellent dry fly hackles with it, and you can not alter its texture, but apart from that it is probably all right!

This is a bunch of hare body fur from about the middle of the back of the animal from a winter pelt. This is from an old jack hare. ( a jack is a male, female is a jill, a young hare is a leveret. Hares are usually solitary, or in pairs, but a group of hares is known as a ?drove? of hares).

The bunch was selected by grasping a bunch with the fingers, like this, and cutting it off with scissors, as close to the pelt as possible;

Cont’d ->

To use this sensibly for various things, it must be separated into it?s component parts. Here is that bunch reduced to its components by cutting the tips off, cutting the middle part off, ( which is very dark, almost black here) and leaving the guard hair roots with the underfur which is soft and mainly light coloured.

One may also separate the guard hairs by separating the underfur and the guard hair from the bunch. This is done by simply pulling the underfur from the bunch with the fingers. This results in a bunch of long guard hairs like this, ( this guard hair is going to be used as a hackle on a dry fly), and the underfur on the right. Some ?immature ? guard hair is also remove here;

It should be noted that there is a lot more underfur than guard hair!

One might also simply cut this guard hair into smaller pieces and use it as dubbing. This will give a darker dubbing with a greyish tint, because the guard hair itself has these three shades of hair along it?s length. This dubbing will be spiky, and it will shed water easily.

The underfur may be used, but unless very tightly dubbed, ( and also treated with a floatant) it will soak up water like a sponge.Many old time dressers merely used the “flax” which is the light yellow/brown/red/black guard hair tips, and discarded the rest.I often use the whole length of the guard hair for hackling dry flies, and the “flax” for dubbing the bodies. One may of course use it for hair hackles on wet flies as well.

One may also mix the flax and the “middle cut” ( the dark hair in the picture in this case), from the guard hair, in whatever proportions required to get the shade one is aiming for. This is then more or less identical to the hair which one obtains by scraping the ears, which have less or no underfur, just the tips ( very short on the ears) and the “middle cut”, which is why the dubbing from the ears is spikier. This is also considerably easier than scraping about for little return on mummified ears!

Other blends are also possible, such as the flax with the underfur. This gives an easily dubbed mixture which will go on tight, but still have some nice spiky guard hairs. This will then of course be a much lighter shade. One may also simply use the underfur which takes dye very well (or pantone marker),is very soft, and can be cut into small pieces for “touch” dubbing. But this is quite useless for dry flies. Even with floatant it will sink fairly quickly.

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.

Cont’d ->

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

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 seriously 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 conatiner which should be about a third full of water. DON`T DO THIS WITH A COFFEE GRINDER!!! It will short circuit.

Trapping air in dubbing is not a consideration. Anything that traps air, will also trap water. We usually wish to avoid that. For dry flies, we want a high percentage of guard hair in the dubbing, ( because we want the fly to float) but this is difficult to dub using some methods, so we have to “soften” it.

Take a very tiny pinch of appropriately coloured underfur, It does not really matter where this is from, of course the colour should suit the blend! But the underfur on the mask is dark blue grey. The underfur on the back is very very light grey, almost white.

Underfur from other paces is also different colours. It also does not really matter what you use to “soften” the dubbing here. rabbit, or even soft wool will do. Take some of the guard hair, and mix in the pinch of softer fur. You want about 10% soft hair and 90% guard hair. You also need the right “staple” The guard hair should be no less than 3mm and no more than 4mm for the most part.The soft fur you use should be longer, about 4 to 5 mm. This is then easily dubbable. The softer fur “binds” the guard hair. It does affect the floating properties somewhat though. One may use other methods to dub guard, or ?middle cut?, hair, such as a split thread or dubbing loop technique.

You can find some softish guard hair right at the very base of the ears which you can use as well. this is a buff colour. There is also some soft guard hair of this colour inside the ear close to the black tips of the ears.

Incidentally a “bunny is not just a bunny” ! Hares have different hair to rabbits. Some wild rabbit fur will work for some things, but I can?t tell you which. You have to try it. Neither wild nor dDomestic rabbit fur will usually work very well for dry fly hackles for instrance. There are several hundred breeds of rabbit, and they all have different hair, but a lot of it is simply unsuitable for many purposes. The matter is often further confused as Americans often refer to hares as rabbits. These are entirely different animals.

Everything depends on the properties of the material concerned. Loosely dubbed waterproof dubbing floats better than tightly dubbed waterproof dubbing. This is a factor of the surface area and the air retention among other things. But non waterproof loose soft dubbing will sink quickly.

Cont’d ->

Dubbing tightly, prevents water soaking into otherwise non-waterproof dubbing, because there is no space for the water to get into. Dubbing loosely will make it soak up water faster. If you drop a wash cloth in the bathtub it will soak up water immediately. If you wring it out tightly, and then hold it underwater,it will not soak up much water at all as there is no space for the water to soak into.

Applying floatant of various types also affects the properties of materials. The best floatant is dry and hydrophobic. Some natural materials like snowshoe and other animal furs exhibit mild hydrophobic properties anyway. This is how the animals shed water, They shake themselves, and the water flies off the fur or hair. Sheeps wool and some other things are also hydrophobic in their natural states, as they are full of various oils and fats. This waterproofs the animal. Water birds operate on the same principle, but have feathers and down. The feathers are waterproof because the bird preens them with oil from its preen gland. If you degrease a bird, it sinks and drowns.

Underfur is mainly insulation. It is designed to trap pockets of air forming an insulating shield. It is not normally waterproof, and if too much water gets past the guard hair, the animal will become waterlogged and die of hypothermia.

One other point here, which is often forgotten. many old time dressers used fur from various water animals, claiming these were superior. Which is indeed also the case with a few things. But the main reason for this is, is that

NONE OF THESE PELTS WERE TANNED!!!

Much the same applies to various water bird feathers. Once hot dyed, or otherwise treated, they lose most of their properties. Guard hairs from any skin will float better than any underfur. Guard hairs from certain animals, or from certain parts on the skin of certain animals, float better than anything else at all. ( Hare back guard hair floats like a cork, hare belly fur sinks like a stone!) The guard hair from tanned pelts will also float better than any underfur, but not usually as well as the guard hair from untanned pelts. The hair from tanned pelts is “Softened” by the tanning process, so it is not as good for dry fly hackles as it loses a lot of its resilience, ( “springiness”). The same applies to dry fly dubbing which is to be used “loosely” ( not tightly packed ).

This does not matter much for body dubbing which is to be tightly packed, or for many wet flies. Untanned fur and hair makes better flies, also wet flies. The “shine” of the hair is different, and closely resembles chitinous carapace, chitin legs etc. Hair consists mainly of Keratin, and ALL hairs ( and feathers ) are composed of dead material. Treating this material in various ways can affect its properties quite extensively. Using hair conditioner on hair or fur ( often recommended) is for this reason not a good idea, as it softens the material. Unless of course you actually want it softer. Tanning and other treatments “Dull” the hair, making it softer and also more likely to soak up water. The hard “shine” of the surface is removed.

Furriers use various tricks to replace this shine, but these tricks do not repair the damage to the hair, they merely disguise it. A fur glazer-and-polisher operates a special machine that combs and polishes furs, and manually applies glazing solution to restore lustre. This is done manually using a spray gun or similar. At one time this was all done by hand. Yak butter was commonly used for polishing furs, and there are lots of other things, beeswax in spirit etc etc. This is the reason why you can not simply wash an expensive fur coat. It will end up looking terrible, because the polish is removed. Cleaning a fur coat is a job for a specialist. The polish also makes the fur more resistant to water and dirt once again, as it was on the live animal.

The only treatment I use on my pelts is a thorough wash in hand warm soapy water, ( using pure soap). Rinse thoroughly, and allow to dry. Hot dyeing pelts also makes them less suitable for a number of things. On many wet flies, it is often advantageous to treat the dubbing with watershed or similar, as this give the fly a different appearance. Of course, you may need to weight such flies, as they otherwise will not penetrate the film well ( “Poor entry” ).

There are a number of studies extant on the Young?s Modulus of fur and feathers. This makes very interesting reading, ( if one is so inclined! ) The term now most commonly used for Young?s Modulus is “Elastic Modulus”. The same hype phrase used to sell fishing rods!

http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/...9.pdf

The point is, that any treatment of hair or fur, including the removal of natural oils, affects its properties considerably. Just washing a pelt once has virtually no effect, but radical treatments like tanning or dyeing have very considerable effects, often rendering the material useless, or at least very considerably less suited to certain applications.

Bleaching renders many things completely useless as well. It severely affects the surface properties of the hair. Bleached fur or feather will soak up water immediately. The application of the right floatant, ( which of course is also soaked up), will replace some properties, and make such materials at least temporarily waterproof.

Many untreated materials require no floatant. At one time cock hackles were prized because they floated without any treatment at all. The same applies to guard hair from untanned pelts. If you wish to increase the floating properties of UNTANNED pelts or untreated feathers, then you need to use a chemical which drys, and is hydrophobic, such as watershed. Paste floatants ( like Gink etc) will often achieve the reverse effect. Also, none of these things are “floatants”, they are all waterproofing agents.

The PROPERTIES of many things make them more or less suitable for certain things. I know lots of people who have boxes and bags of all sorts of dubbing in every conceivable colour and texture, and some that are barely conceivable! With flash, with plastic, with gold dust, and who knows what else. But practically none of them know what properties the stuff might possess. The main reason I make my own dubbing, from materials I obtain myself, is because I then know what it is, and what it will do. Pre -mixed dubbing in a box is absolutely useless to me, because I don?t know its properties. It might sink like a lead brick! I also don?t want to mess about testing every single material thoroughly before I can use it.

Nowadays, using modern “floatants”, ( read “waterproofing agents”) one can ignore a lot of things, just as people nowadays largely ignore rod actions and simply choose what “feels best”. But that does not invalidate the original reasons for using certain things. It is not just the colour and texture of dubbing which are important, the intrinsic properties are important. Also, it is better if you know how and why things work.

Synthetic dubbing does not float a fly because it is positively buoyant. It floats because it does not get wet. ( This does not apply to all synthetics, some soak water like sponges, and sink like bricks). I would prefer to have an untreated Snowshoe hare pelt, instead of the feet, as I am quite certain the back guard hair would have the properties I am looking for, and I could easily colour it with a marker pen to suit my taste. Unfortunately , I can not obtain such a pelt here. I have tried for a long time.

One can dye hare fur more or less any colour, and the end result depends on how dark that colour is. I dye this fur a lot. The results depend on which part of the fur you dye, and how you dye it. Pure white belly fur dyes up extremely well, giving bright vibrant colours. Various other sections of fur give varying results depending on the colours and shades already extant, and the intensity of the dye bath used. One can dye such fur jet black if one wishes, but I don?t really see much point in doing so. One loses the subtle shade changes of the natural fur, which is partly why it is so attractive. The only way to get a hot aniline dye, ( and many others as well!) to take properly, is to have the bath at the right temperature. It does not matter how long you leave the material in the bath. Either it takes, or it does not take, and leaving it longer will make no difference at all.

Tight Lines! ~ Mike Connor

Hare?s Mask

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.
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. This is the same colour and texture as buff opossum fur.

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.

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.

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.

The finished article also has a cross reference to the flies which may be dressed with the various hair, and why it is used. But I am still working on that, and the project is on another disk on another machine, so I can?t give you any of it yet.

Tight Lines! ~ Mike Connor

Hare?s Ears

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

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 scheme 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. You may of course shave it, using an electric razor or similar, but this tends to shorten already very short hair, and as various parts of it are quite spiky, this may be difficult to dub.

Tight Lines! ~ Mike Connor

Mike, you might want to contact the publishers before posting long things like this. Seems more appropriate for an article or three than a BB post, at least to me. Same with the fly tutorials and such.

Just a thought.

Dennis

Mike,

I sure can’t tell you how much I appreciate the information you have been posting. It is great. Please continue. It is most beneficial.

If anybody feels it is inappropriate, and says so, then I can simply stop.

Unfortunately, some information, in order to be really useful, has to be fairly comprehensive, and this often results in quite long articles.

There is a text ( and picture) limit on this board, and the only option is to split such information into shorter texts.

All these things are merely supposed to help people looking for information. If it annoys anybody, or people don’t want it, then that is perfectly OK. Just say so, and I will cease posting.

TL
MC

My pleasure, but it seems I will have to see how it goes. If people complain about it, then I simply wont bother.

TL
MC

Good afternoon Mike.
Mate I will complain about your dubbing material post,

“If people complain about it”

The complaint is,
its the best piece on Dubbing I’ve ever seen on the net and therefore puts everything else before it into the shadows.

You have exposed to the internet World what has taken most people 10’s of years to discovery, in a few minutes of reading.

Your post have given direction and understanding to mountains of fly tying people and future builders of flies on the construction of a item most people haven’t a clue about.

Your words will be used as a reference on the construction of Dubbing for years to come.

Too long… whos joking, just keep writing !:slight_smile:

Kindest regards,
UB
ps, I make and sell dubbing.

I dont think anyone is complaining. Just making the suggestion that you talk to castwell and ladyfisher about getting this info published as an article instead of posting it in the bulletin board. Its great info, just might better presented in article form than the separate posts the bulletin board requires. Either way, thanks for all the information you’ve been providing no matter how it gets presented.

Glad you enjoyed it.

Over the years I have written a lot of stuff, some published in various places, even in various languages, some not. I have quite a few thousand articles on various things on my computer now, so I am often able to answer some questions with an article on the matter. Some of these tend to be rather in depth.

I don?t mind “complaints” like yours! :slight_smile:

Regards and tight lines!

Mike

Mike,

Thanks for this comprehensive work on Thumper and his friends:p. I found it interesting as well as informative, and I appreciate your willingness to share your knowledge with us.

Could this be a single article? Sure it could, but it’s not necessary except for easier archival retrieval with the search engine. Actually, I find that works as comprehensive as this one are more easily digested by me in increments rather than one long article. We all learn differently, but this works just fine for me.

Keep sharing and caring.

Joe

Mike-

Excellent information. Terrific presentation.

Thanks very much!

peregrines

Mike,

I am not complaining. You would definitely know if I was. However, there are several advantages, both to you and to the reader, in having this published as an article, or series of articles, rather than as a BB post. For the reader, this allows them to link to, archive, download, or print the article(s) easily, makes FINDING it on the 11,000+ pages of this site much easier in a week or a year or a decade, and keeps your information clear and separate from all of the other things that twine with it in a BB thread, such as this post of mine.

The site benefits by having high quality articles which can be readily accessed by readers.

You benefit by having your work professionally edited and proofread (not saying it needs it, but few works are not improved by others reviewing) prior to publishing, and by having it actually PUBLISHED at a highly reputable site like this. Which you can then put on your resume, if you so desire. Published articles, to those who do not know you, carry more weight than a BB post.

Mike

No complaints from ME!!! I appreciate all your stuff and truthfully if Lady and JC and ANY problems with it they would say so.

Your writing also brings into effect the differences not only in tying between different sides of the pond but also the differences in skins and pelts (Yes I used to visit your site often!!)

Now if you could find a really BIG STASH of Chadwick 477 yarn CHEAP!!! LOL

Keep up the writing and we’ll keep sucking it all up!! I usually copy and paste and make it into a .pdf file.

Fatman

Dennis I agree----I dont read the articles. They are too long and should be put some where alse on FAOL. I sometime read the answers to the post. BILL

:cool: Yeah, that pictorial post might’ve been a longish post but for anyone quite interested (I am) and has the time (I do at present) there’s one heckuva lot of pertinent info there.

Make a copy of it, print it out and save it for ref. Some day, when you get to thinking “what if I…” and you’ll have it answered.

Jeremy.