Pike/Musky Brushes

Bucktail, yak hair, flash products, and various synthetics including Kanekalon hair extensions, SF Blend, Wampa Hair from Lund's Fly Shop, Baitfish Blends and more from Fly Tier's Dungeon, and strung Fuzzy Fiber are the various materials that I've been incorporating in to the brushes I've started spinning.

When I happened upon the Stonfo Dubbing Brush Maker, it suited so closely what I'd been wanting in one of these devices that I quickly ordered it. My intentions was to make my own brushes to be used for heads on my musky flies. I was never very happy with commercially-made brushes -- they were too sparse and too expensive.

Having bought the brush maker to spin brushes for heads, I immediately delved into brushes to make complete musky flies (minus the feather tails).  Ha! That has been a walk on the pull-my-hair-out side.  There is a huge learning curve to spinning brushes using longer length material and there is no instruction manual for it. Strangely enough after my first 2 brushes showed potential, the next 2 brushes were wonderful successes! I thought I had it made.

For some reason, for many reasons, I had many brush failures after that.

The brushes in the foreground are ~8.5" long. 

But now, I'm getting my brushy act together and have spun numerous larger brushes successfully in a row.

The next step is to turn them into musky/pike flies just as I did to create those couple flies two months ago. I have also created a nice bath of brushes intended for use as musky fly heads. These are quick and easy (and probably why they are more fun) to make. I suspect there is also a learning curve to making brushes for heads, but I went crazy buying material to make brushes so I suspect success will be in my future... sooner or later!

Two brushes are spun at one time for musky fly heads.

My goal is to write spinning tips or another article for successfully making brushes to this post or a different post. I'd like to successfully transition some of these brushes to flies prior to taking on the task of helping others to spin brushes. But for now, I've got the book, The Weight of Night by Christine Carbo waiting to be read. The murder mystery, set in Glacier National Park, has been an excellent way to finish out the nights right before bed.