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 from 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 sometimes they say where they got the fur from which they used in their patterns.This also makes it a lot easier to repeat successful experiments. Remember that this if you use a dry blending method the colours will look darker when the fur is wet. If you want to see the 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. You can also use a jam jar as described elsewhere.
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. We may also want some guard hair in dubbing for appearance.
Take a very tiny pinch of appropriately coloured hare 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, silk ("shredded floss) , 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 shortest guard hair should be no less than 3mm for most things.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 domestic rabbit fur will usually work very well for dry fly hackles for instance. 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.
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
I may well have missed it, but do you have a particular soap you like for washing your skins?
but i think im gonna use some more "appropriate"feathers and fur.