ive been trying to learn to tie some classic salmon flies and im starting to get some pretty decent results.
heres a picture of a green highlander i did
but anyways, some of the flies i want to do call for european jay as the throat. this requires wrapping it like hackle basically. and as i understand, to do this, you need to first split the feather down the rachis. how do you do this? i decided to practice on some similar sized feathers in found in my yard before cutting up my expensive feathers, but whenever i try to split it, it just never works. what happens is itll splint just fine about half way up and then it gets too thin for the razer blade and it cuts off one of the halves, so i only end up with one half that i can use.
any advise? thanks
Be sure to use the thinnest and sharpest knife you can use.I would look at the back of the feather and look for the line you can see in the rachis and cut the feather there. After cutting it, I clean the inside out with a bodkin, then, thin out more of the rachis. You’ll need practice to cut the whole feather in Half. hope it helps.
DDR -
Can’t help you with your question. Just wanted to compliment you on the green highlander.
John
Hi 500
Very impressive tying job. 8T 
DDRRedneck500
A trick shown me once to split feather is to place them in to some warm water and let soak for a few hour before trying to split them. The water soften the stem a little makeing it easier to split cleanly.
Ghost.
P.S. check the Atlantic Fly tying section by Ronn Lacus Sr. or drop him an email, I can think of no one better for Atlantic Fly Tying trick then Ronn. There is a link on the sponser page to his web site.
This kid sure can tie some great flies can’t he
Hi DDRRedneck500,
I’ve not split feathers, so can’t help there. Just wanted to compliment you on a wonderful tie there!
- Jeff
I’m not sure you will be able to split the entire feather, and I’m not sure you want to. If the feather has the good blue/black barring on both sides of the rachis (or stem as I like to call it), then it shouldn’t be used for hackle. Use the ones with all black on one side for hackle. Save your full ones for Evangeline or Nelly Bly or any of the Trahern patterns that require a full feather. Take a feather with one side that’s unusable, and strip the unusable part off. Then, split it at the bottom and tear the stem as far up as you can go. This should leave most of the bulk off, which is all you’re really trying to accomplish. The stem is flexible toward the top anyway, so you don’t have to strip up very far.
Keep in mind that you must tie relatively small flies (2/0 or smaller) to be able to use the short-fibered jay hackle. Otherwise switch to guinea dyed blue, which I realize you probably don’t want to do, but that’s the reality. Hope this helps.
Eric
By the way, nice fly!
thanks for the info everyone.
and eaustin, thanks a lot that aswers a lot of questions i was contemplating.
Splitting from the tip without a knife works best for me and soaking makes all the difference. Bending the desired side down farther keeps the strip much smaller than the unused side will be and there is no need to thin it further. A reinforcing wrap is important with the thin hackles, though.
art
Nice fly ya got there… i dont tie many salmons but do tie lots of speys that use similar tying tactics… the way i split feathers is to soak them in warm water fer 1 or 2 hours… then i lay them on they side & cut of the very tip (big end)… i use a very exacto knife handle with a half of a razorblade in it to split the quill… split in down ith length till ya get 3/4 the way down then grasp the split end… pulling outwards very qiuckly on the split ends usually finnishes the rest of the splitting… for delicate & thin feathers ya gota pull a little slower…