I’m sure the answer to my question is somewhere in the mass of threads here, but I haven’t been able to find it.
I am coming back to fly fishing and tying after a 40+ year absence (makes that Junior Member tag a bit misleading), following AJs Basic Tying instruction to get back into the tying part. Back in the day, I never used dubbin, only tying with feathers and yarn, mostly bass and pan flies, so this dubbin stuff is brand new to me. I have the concept of a little goes a long, long, long, long way and always going in the same direction with the thumb and forefinger. My problem is getting the stuff to wrap neatly around the thread. I’ve watched videos where the the tyer just zip, zip, zip and the dubbin looks as neat as can be.
When I twist dubbin in, it doesn’t stick to the thread and ends up looking like a small cloud just kind of surrounding the thread and not really attached in any way. I’ve tried wax, but that doesn’t seem to help.
Since I’m terrible at applying dubbing, I can give advice on a few things not to do:
don’t apply too much material
twist the dubbing on in one direction
Great thing about the Interweb is there’s so much info on-line nowdays; go to Youtube and check out how Hans Weilenmann, Davey McPhail, Craig Mathews, Wally Wiese, etc do it. Btw, welcome to the forum.
When I twist dubbin in, it doesn’t stick to the thread and ends up looking like a small cloud just kind of surrounding the thread and not really attached in any way. I’ve tried wax, but that doesn’t seem to help.
That’s the point were I lick my finger tips and give it one more tight twist.
The post from the ukflydressing was most informative and the tip about licking the finger tips. I have very dry skin, too many years working in and with concrete and concrete products. Just moistening the finger tips and putting more pressure on the thread made a world of difference.
After tying for over 68 years, I always felt my methods (all of em) made something lacking in my tying.
After learning Don Os “Rope dub” I can dub anything and it looks far better on the completed flies I tie. http://www.fantasyflies.com/ropedub_dvd.php
It works for me.
A lot depends on the type of dubbing. Some of the soft synthetics and soft naturals like opossum and beaver belly can be applied directly to a waxed (sticky wax) thread. Spiky stuff like hares mask, squirrel, and some of the coarse synthetics are better applied using a dubbing loop.
One misconception about dubbing leads to lots of problems. When applying dubbing to form a “dubbing noodle” the dubbing isn’t stuck to the thread. It sticks to itself around the thread. On a microscopic level the process is the same as felting. Scotfly’s article is very good and shows this to be the case. His picture of dubbing on copper wire shows this point. In Production Fly Tying AK Best also hints at this when he says to put the wax onto your fingers not the thread. Though I’m not an advocate of using wax at all, and am probably the one responsible for Scotfly not using it either. Moistened fingers help a great deal. In time using that you will find that good technique develops and then you will not need to moisten your fingers. The demonstration of dubbing onto unwaxed copper wire is one I have been using for around 20 years.
Scotfly also makes another point that should be stressed. Use lots of pressure. Looking at your thumb nail will indicate if you are using enough. It should go white with the pressure. If it doesn’t you are not using enough.
Don’t give up on it. Once mastered it is a very useful technique. When you can do it you’ll never understand how you couldn’t.
Cheers,
A.
I agree. Certain types of dubbing are just much easier to dub. Superfine for dry flies may be the easiest to dub and can be had at just about any fly shop or on-line.
Some synthetics, like SLF, are just a nightmare to dub.
Make sure you’re using pre-waxed thread. I do use wax when dealing with some of the harder-to-dub synthetics. I follow AK’s adviced about just touching the wax with my index and middle finger; I don’t apply the wax directly to my thread.
among the good suggestions, one thing I suggest that you do is to use the non-dubbing hand to keep the thread tensioned as you “roll” the material. additionally, i suggest that you also use the non-dubbing hand to hold the the spool end of the dubbing to keep from rolling after the first/second applications. wish you luck
Don O just posted some flies he has been tying. I talked with him on the phone and he gave me permission to post & share with you BB FAOL tiers.
Denny
Just wanted to send a photo of what I’ve been working on. This card of flies is similar to the last grub-bug card, but almost all of the flies are finished. These are simple, quick patterns, made to be fished hard. The ‘un-finished’ grubs are actually done. I’m going to fish then ‘as-is’- one-min. flies. These flies are headed for my fly boxes. Those others will wind up in sample sets.
You’ll see flies with dry-fly hackle to the right, but the hackle isn’t palmered- it’s rope-dubbed. If you have the DVD, you know how to add hackle into your dubbing or peacock rope. But if you don’t want it as part of the rope, say a well segmented bugger or even a dry fly collar, rope just the hackle as you would dubbing and then wrap the rope-hackle down into the rope-dub segments or around the front as you would a dry fly. DVD-2 will have videos of both processes, but you should be able to nail it down now with what you know.
Those dry flies to the right are near bullet-proof. The body is tied with rope-dubbed fine fur, then brushed hard and clipped 3 times with my rifle-bore brush. After I initially rope the abdomen, I flat wrap the remaining dubbing under the wing area. This gives a nice base for the wings and some underbody below the hackles. This makes a durable grub-body on the dry- looks good and floats very well.
Next, I tie on two wingers, but hair wings would be very durable also.
The last part is the hackle. How many flies have you had trashed by the fish cutting one of the hackle winds, allowing it to unwrap? (Some tiers back-wrap through the hackles, but this spreads them out and does not completely tie them down. And it doesn’t work on palmered abdomens.) So let’s rope-dub just the hackle. Take a length of hackle about 2" long, prep it and tie it down by the tip tightly, and then trim off the tip. Now take your clip-spinner (see the DVD) and spin the butt end of the hackle around the twing thread, just like you would do dubbing. Compress and re-spin until you have the hackle density you want. Then wrap around the front as you would a hackle collar, but don’t do the back-up wraps- just wrap towards the eye. Each time you wrap, fold the hackles back with your fingers so that the next wrap doesn’t over-wrap hackles. About 3 to 4 wraps of hackle does it for a dry. Notice how much hackle you used and make the next one just enough with a little to tie down.
I can then take my wire brush and rake the dickens out of the fly and it doesn even change it. Way worse abuse than a fish would give it, and really very little extra work to rope the hackle. I can’t tell the difference in the looks between the two.
If you want i can take some progress and comparison photos and post them.
The soft-hackle flies are hackled with just the tips of the barbs down at the base of large webby wet-fly necks. I have lots of them left over from tying streamers. I harvest these for semi-limber soft-hackles, but the barbs are way long and the stems are huge. So I use just the tips and flare them around the hook at the eye, trimming off the excess butts. I can easily tie #24 soft-hackle wets this way. I also use these base barbs when tying the tails of the Ususal wet flies. They look great with the grub-bodies -row 4, #1.
This is not the only way I do soft hackles. I also palmer them from soft-hackle capes like Denny sells. I like to tie my flies more than one way, just to see if the fish care.
If I peacock the thorax of a fly, I’ll rope one or two peacock strands and wrap it down. This stops them from tooth-cutting the body strands of peacock herl.
The big red fly is some new syn-seal with red micro-flashabou that ropes and brushes out extremely well. You can see segments below the hackles very well in real life, but the camera can’t show it.
Hope this makes for some interesting tying this winter for you. More to come.
I have two rules…“Less is more” and “moisten fingers” I may have used wax way back when I started tying, but can’t remember is was so long ago…
Don’t need wax. Some thread is slightly waxed if you need it.
