Making Dubbing

[ditz2 0]

good reading material

 

http://ukflydressing...lay&thread=4046

 

Flytying New & Old

 

 

 

 

great tutorial....My hat is off to this fella. I tied flies for several years without having a clue as to what is dubbing. All new tiers should be so lucky at to be exposed to this.

[Prybis 0]

http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8_L9W7zX7FE

 

Mike P.

[Prybis 0]

 

Hope This works.

 

Mike P.

[Johny Utah 0]

Interesting. Well all i can say is that a coffee grinder when used properly, ie not over loaded. Does exactly the same thing. Meaning it the blades lift the dubbing, and rotate at such speeds that its the air movement that mixes the dubbing, not the blades.

[ashley 0]

I bought my coffee grinder years ago at a carboot/flea market for less than a pound (I guess less than a dollar).

 

Still works great. I use it for all my dubbing. All of my Irish flies have blended bodies has well as many of my river dries and nymphs which I believe to be more effective than single colour bodies.

 

There is also blending by hand which is OK when tying in camp or for just a few flies but the blend doesn't seem right.

[feathers5 0]

Use a coffee grinder. Why make it difficult for yourself.

[DFFlyfish 0]

Great link posted! I've been looking into this as well

[SilverCreek 0]

I make some small amounts using two pet brushes. Most of my own dubbings are not a smooth color. I like the varigations that I get by doing it this way.

Get some neat colors oout of yanr ends that are aplaca, wool and other furs like that.

Crappie

 

 

Here's an alternative to coffee grinders and the air dubbing mixers.

I have a pair of carding brushes that I use to mix dubbing. Works better than any coffee grinder or air system for long fibers that tend to wrap them selves around the grinder blades. They are used to pull apart and align wool from sheep and llamas so the fibers can be spun into wool yarn on a spinning wheel.

They are great for small amounts of dubbing and you can titrate the amounts of different fur to get just the mixture you want. You want a small amount of a specific color to try? No Problem!

Dog brushes can be used but carding brushes work much better and faster.

[mvendon 0]

Hi SilverCreek,

 

Have you tried your carding brushes on cut up pieces of yarn ? If so, how fast were you able to get the yarn back into it's original un-spun version? A coffee grinder just spins the cut up yarn around, so I have to comb out each ply / ply's till it's basically all separated enough to put it back into the coffee grinder to mix with other yarn that I also have to comb out. It's very time consuming just for a little bit, even though it's enough for quite a few flies at a pop.

 

Regards,

Mark

[shoebop 0]

Hi SilverCreek,

 

Have you tried your carding brushes on cut up pieces of yarn ? If so, how fast were you able to get the yarn back into it's original un-spun version? A coffee grinder just spins the cut up yarn around, so I have to comb out each ply / ply's till it's basically all separated enough to put it back into the coffee grinder to mix with other yarn that I also have to comb out. It's very time consuming just for a little bit, even though it's enough for quite a few flies at a pop.

 

Regards,

Mark

I found if I just run the grinder longer that eventually it blends it pretty well. I just pick out a few pieces that wouldn't cooperate. Now I'm not sure about every kind of yarn. Wool might be different than a poly blend etc. Also it helps not to try to do too much at a time.

[SilverCreek 0]

I think you would still need to comb the yarn out before you use the carding brushes. They are not designed to untwist yarn.

 

I learned about carding brushes from Royce Dam. Royce was given the FFF 1994 Buz Buszek Memorial Fly Tying Award. Later he wrote about how he uses them in his book. You can read about it in this section of the The Practical Fly Tier.

 

Gary Borger credits Royce with helping Gary come up with the strip nymph pattern. Gary later won the award in 2006.

 

http://www.flytyinggroup.org/HistoryBuszek.htm

 

 

 

 

[mvendon 0]

Thank you for the replies,

 

Wool is what I've been working on, specifically a Chadwicks 477 sub with a little bit of clear antron. Here's a pic, even though the yarn covers the number of the original on the card .

 

Regards,

Mark

 

[Kirk Dietrich 0]

You can also mix dubbing with air

 

http://dailyflytyer.com/2010/11/1857/

 

Works very well without chopping the material finer or waiting for it to dry.

 

You can do this with a gallon jar and compressor also.

That's how I do it. I use a one gallon ice cream pail. I've got a bunch of holes poked in the top to relieve some pressure and a larger hole to insert the tip of my air gun that is hooked to my compressor. The relief holes are important or you'll blow the lid right off - speaking from experience on that one.

Works great though!

 

Kirk

[Trevor Langlais 0]

anyone ever try dryer lint?

[Roofish 0]

Seems to me that the blender could become clogged with the fibers??????