Craft Fur Dubbing Brush

Speed up your complex streamers

Dubbing Brushes with some Hambone flies

As many of you know by now, I love to tie streamers with dubbing loops. Dubbing loops are a great way to place a material on a fly with maximum durability and full body. It really wasn't until a few months ago that I decided to give my hand a try with dubbing brushes because we had just ordered about every color of craft fur under the sun. I was determined to get over my love/hate relationship with craft fur and start using it more in my patterns. I was building loops with a couple colors of craft fur and putting in flash, but I realized that I probably ought to just build brushes if I was going to get any more complex.

My biggest beef with the dubbing brush jigs/tables that I had seen was that they left very little room for longer fibers once you start to twist them. I wanted table that I could remove once I started twisting the brush so I could ensure that none of the long fibers would be impeded. I know there are some really beautiful jigs out there with all the features that I would want, but they also cost an arm and a leg. This one cost me about $20, and it could cost a lot less than that if I were more patient. In the video you will see the basic design of the jig, and you will also see that I won't be teaching wood shop at any vocational school any time soon. I was going for form over function... and I succeeded. To be clear, this is the third jig that I built (in about a week), and there may be more changes to it if we decide to make these for the masses (obviously by someone more able than me. Two changes that I have already made since we filmed this are that I bent out the hook holding the key ring so the ring was easier to take off and put on the drill, and I also added some rubber feet to the bottom to prevent slippage. I also realized that I probably don't need to clamp down the table with the wood clamp so I experimented without it with no issues. I decided to use a power drill to twist up my brush because most everyone has a drill already and I wanted to keep it simple. I know that we could have used a fancy bearing system or a motor built into the tool, but we wanted to keep costs down. If you don't have a power drill, you should be able to find something that works for about $30 to $40 (probably less than that at Harbor Freight.)

I have put a ton of materials into this jig including raccoon, arctic fox, coyote, rabbit, etc etc... They all work great, and I'm also working on modifications on the jig so it's more "short fiber" friendly. The key here is to be creative, so if you have a long stringy material that you think would look cool in a fly, throw it in the brush jig to see what you come up with!

~ Cheech

Don't forget to check out the recipes under the video!

We have a limited quantity of the new dubbing brush tables for sale as shown below

Recipes:

Brown/Yellow

Wire: UTC dubbing brush wire .009 (BUY HERE)

Craft Fur 1: Yellow (BUY HERE)

Craft Fur 2: Medium brown (BUY HERE)

Flash: Ice wing fiber: Gold (BUY HERE)