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| The
Ideal Materials
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Make your
dry fly dubbing in bulk quantities while washing your clothes!
It's that easy!
Not all fabric
makes for good dry-fly dubbing, however. The most ideal clothing
materials are polar-fleece and cotton blends. 100% cotton is a
better for nymphs as it dubs on as an absorbing material, but
washing cottons, such as old sweatshirts and t-shirts yields very
little dubbing at a time. NEW clothes are your best bet!
In particular,
if you have a new sweatshirt or polar-fleece garment, dry it separately
to ensure your dryer lint-trap catches the lint exclusively of
other garments
Ideal colors
to consider are earth tones and whites. I recently purchased a
new brown polar-fleece garment and an olive-grey sweatshirt. I
made careful preparations to wash and dry them separately. The
results were greater than my expectations and yielded far greater
dubbing than I'll need for years to come!
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| The
Process
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I recommend
washing the NEW garment by hand to ensure the washer does not
"wash away" any more potential dubbing than necessary.
This also preserves the color of the garment if you like the color
as it stands. Regardless, even if the color is not what you desire,
if it's made of polar-fleece or cotton-blends, it is easy to dye
later, if you so desire. Aside from the color, the dubbing fiber
consistency and usage to dry flies make the effort worth-the-while
to manufacture your own dubbing.
Worn garments
can also produce a nice array of dubbing, but quantities are much
less than new garments. Cotton-blend sweatshirts and towels always
seem to produce viable quantities of usable lint.
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| The
Results!
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The results
are stunning! As seen in the series of photographs below, the
polar-fleece and cotton-blend lint produces a fiber consistency
that rivals SLF Finesse blends and Wapsi or Orvis dry fly dubbing.
The lint dubbing came out of the dryer in 100% usable form, ready
to use!
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Light
olive brown with a touch of adams gray.
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Adams
gray.
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Basic
light brown or a faint scud pink
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Preparing
the Dubbing for Use
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If you've
taken care to separate your potential dubbing material clothes,
there is probably no need to pick through the dubbing and "cleanse"
it from other dryer lint debris that tends to get in the trap.
Take note
that it is a good idea to clean your dryer and lint trap with
a vacuum prior to drying a garment. This will ensure a very clean
batch of pure lint for use in dubbing. This is especially true
if you have pets inthe household that shed and leave thier trace
in the washing room!
One other
hint: Ssoak a drop or two of Hareline Dubbin's Water Shed on the
fly. Polar-fleece dubbing is exceptional at accepting this type
of water-proofing. As an alternate, use 3M's Scotch-Guard fabric
protector, which works just as well.
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Water-shed
or 3M's scotchguard fabric protector is a great additive
to making your dry flies more durable and longer floating.
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| CAUTIONS!
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- Follow
manufacturer instructions for laundering clothes!
- Do not
use your dryer for wools, angora sweaters, delicate silks or
any thing that you really would like to see if it produces
good dubbing! This article is about dry-fly dubbing primarily
using poly-fleeces and cottons. GFF does not recommend any other
fabric in your dryer.
- Check
with the laundry-master in your household before expirementing!
- Don't
dry clothes any longer than it takes to them dry. You won't
get any more dubbing out of a garment by drying it for hours.
All you will do is continue to break down the garment and shrink
it beyond wearable form! After all, you buy clothes to wear,
not for dubbing, ...don't you?!
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