Notice how Levi pulled the calf-tail fibers out to 90° from the center of the tail. That automatically aligns the tips pretty well without turning them into straight paint brush looking end to the wing. You'll always have a few fibers to pick out but just holing it out that way gets it pretty close. Also works well on feather fibers like Pheasant Tail. Had another thought. If you like dying materials and you can't find a flank feather long enough, get some Bronze Mallard shoulder feathers and dye them up. You can dye them with commercial dyes such as Rit in "maple sugar" or just get a bunch of skins from yellow onions and soak the skins in water for a day or two. Then strain out the skins and dye your feathers in that. That will give a pretty nice "dyed wood duck" color.
a couple of things you can do to help with the trimming. One is to either get a single edge razor blade or a double-edge razor blade with strapping tape over one edge or multiple layers of some other tape so you don't accidentally cut yourself. Then use that razor blade to make the first indexing cut along the bottom. It's real easy to make that bottom cut nice and flat with a razor because it cuts all the way across the hair at once.. Another thing you can do on smaller flies (size 6 or so) to help prevent accidentally cutting that hair collar is cut off about a 1/4" piece of a plastic straw and then cut a slit through it front to back so the bottom opens up. Because you have that slit in it you can easily put it around your thread and slide it up to and over the head of the fly. Slowly move it back until gets past the head and over the longer fibers of the collar. Leave it there holding the tips out of the way while you finish shaping the head. Not sure it will be big enough to use on a 1/0 or 2/0 hook but have done it a lot with size 6 streamers. One of those big "Slurpy" straws would have a large enough diameter and you can get LOTs of those 1/4" slit rings out of one of those.
Great video! I like and appreciate that you keep the slight struggle of materials fighting you in it. Keeping it real! Subbed.
Thanks for watching, Robert!
Notice how Levi pulled the calf-tail fibers out to 90° from the center of the tail. That automatically aligns the tips pretty well without turning them into straight paint brush looking end to the wing. You'll always have a few fibers to pick out but just holing it out that way gets it pretty close. Also works well on feather fibers like Pheasant Tail.
Had another thought. If you like dying materials and you can't find a flank feather long enough, get some Bronze Mallard shoulder feathers and dye them up. You can dye them with commercial dyes such as Rit in "maple sugar" or just get a bunch of skins from yellow onions and soak the skins in water for a day or two. Then strain out the skins and dye your feathers in that. That will give a pretty nice "dyed wood duck" color.
a couple of things you can do to help with the trimming. One is to either get a single edge razor blade or a double-edge razor blade with strapping tape over one edge or multiple layers of some other tape so you don't accidentally cut yourself. Then use that razor blade to make the first indexing cut along the bottom. It's real easy to make that bottom cut nice and flat with a razor because it cuts all the way across the hair at once..
Another thing you can do on smaller flies (size 6 or so) to help prevent accidentally cutting that hair collar is cut off about a 1/4" piece of a plastic straw and then cut a slit through it front to back so the bottom opens up. Because you have that slit in it you can easily put it around your thread and slide it up to and over the head of the fly. Slowly move it back until gets past the head and over the longer fibers of the collar. Leave it there holding the tips out of the way while you finish shaping the head. Not sure it will be big enough to use on a 1/0 or 2/0 hook but have done it a lot with size 6 streamers. One of those big "Slurpy" straws would have a large enough diameter and you can get LOTs of those 1/4" slit rings out of one of those.