Making your own Dubbing?

[ACSooner80]

I've got some rabbit hair, and other hair......and I was wondering if there is a way to make it into dubbing? If so how do you do it? And what is the best hair/fur for dubbing?

Thanks,
AC

[FISH*ON]

Shave fur from skin and pull the guard hairs out . Then place in electric coffee grinder and turn it on till you get the dubbing you like. You can also get some nice colors this way by mixing dubbing together.

[skiptomylu]

Yes one of the kind of tall skinny grinders. You can also save clippings from flash and put that into it. You can mic it with Antron or some other kinds of material. You can also make some from the fuzz you get off of ducks and geese, the down. Lots of things you can use to make some, but they make so many different kinds I just bought a lot of it. Stuff like synthetic seal is nice.

[troutingintas]

You don't actually need a coffee grinder unless you are planning on tying a lot flies with of one particular dubbing blend. If your'e only tying a few, simply cut your rabbit fur of whatever into small pieces using scissors and mix the dubbing by hand.
This link covers all the questions you asked:
UKFlyDressing - Dubbing Techniques

[Fatman]

While mixing by hand is okay I'd rather use the coffee grinder it mix's stuff so much better. A while ago there was a thread on good color combo's for horsehead jigs and one of the original colors listed was Chartreuse Head/Teal Body/Chartreuse maribou tail. http://www.crappie.com/crappie/jig-t...nally-got.html

If it hadn't been for the coffee grinder it never would have mixed very well - and I'm glad I made plenty of it. So while not absolutely necessary it really does help in blending and fluffing the materials, especially rabbit, muskrat and beaver. They only cost about $10 bucks NEW at Wally World but you can find them at yard sales and someone listed he got one at the goodwill store.

[troutingintas]

This link has a vidio showing the Charles Craven method of mixing dubbing using a zip lock plastic bag and compressed air:

[unome]

You can make just about any fur/hair into dubbing and as mentioned above there is no need for a coffee grinder if you chop the hair by scissors. Rabbit makes excellent dubbing. Craft fur and strung fuzzy fiber also makes great 'buggy' looking mixed dub.

[fish_4_all]

A good set of hair clippers will do the trick if you have patience. Start with the longest comb for the clippers and progressively get shorter combs to cut the hair all the way down to the skin. I saw this in a video that I can not find anymore. I think it was on one of the major tying sites.

[dvuks]

I use alot of yarn for dubbing, just scrape it with a razor blade. All kinds of colors so theres no mixing.

[Fatman]

Cool technique with the compressed air but the $10 bucks for the grinder still ends up cheaper if you make a lot of different blends.