Quill Quandry

[SteveG]

I've been tying a lot of dries in the 18-24 range lately and have been trying to incorporate quill bodies. I'm not impressed with my results from goose biot (the taper gets fat quickly, and not much room to work with) or stripped dyed peacock quill (fragile and in the Polish brand I have the colors are barely visible.) I think part of the issue of the Polish quills, is that they may be from small peacock eyes. Apparently the large eyes yield quills with more color contrast.

I recall previously seeing stripped hackled quills that were dyed, but can't locate a source. I've also read an excerpt from a **** Talleur book regarding dyeing ginger, white, and cream stripped hackle quills with Kool-Aid tp obtain various shades. I kind of like the idea of a hackle quill which has a built in taper as well.

Lastly, I was thinking the Hends BQ might be an option. But all of the examples I've seen online make it look more like a thread, and not have much segmentation.

Does anyone have any insight as to which brand of hackle I should try and dye? I'm mainly looking for something with flexible stems with no twist. I'm not opposed to buying a soft hackle cape as opposed to "bugger hackle". If anyone has any other insight into my dilemma, feel free to add. Thank you

 

[Dcap240]

I've always used just white strung saddle for dying hackle quills. They seem to hold up better than the packaged ones I've bought. I would recommend that you buy an acid dye though. I've used kool aid and the rit dyes and the acid dyes like jacqards are much better. Kool aid definitely works but it's a lot of trial and error to get the colors you're looking for. Rit works ok for certain colors like yellow and orange but if you're trying to get a certain olive color or a certain shade of brown they don't work so well. All the color mixing charts you will find online are for fabric and don't come out the same on tying materials.

I couldn't even tell you where to get them but at the tying expo in somerset I picked up some veniards stripped peacock quills and they are far superior to the polish quills. Better color and color contrast and not as brittle. I don't know if this is always the case or just my experience. They were pricey though. $6-something a pack. I haven't had the best of luck trying to dye my own peacock quills though. One thing I can tell you is hand stripping the quills gives you a stronger and easier to dye quill than using bleach, but it is a LOT more work.

One thing I picked up from watching Davie McPhail vids is to tie the quill in by the butt and not the tip. The best color contrast is in the butt section as well as the strength of the quill. It takes some getting used to if you use hackle pliers because if you grab it to close to the tip it will break but you can grab the quill where it broke and try again.
As far as biots go I rarely use goose biots anymore. I use mostly turkey biots. They aren't as thick as goose and if you get the full feather there are usually some small thin ones near the tip of the feather. They aren't as strong as goose but a little zap a gap takes care of that. In particular I like the nature spirit biots, they are the best in my opinion. The wapsi ones are good too but you don't get the whole feather and you usualy don't get any small ones. And a tip for using biots is to keep the under body as thin and even as possible, don't try to put a taper in the underbody. You get a taper just by overlapping your wraps.
Hope this helps

 

[dryflyguy]

Although I quit making quill bodies many years ago now, I used to tie quite a few flies with them. And they do look nice - although I think dubbed bodies work just as well.

Anyway, I used to strip peacock quills myself by soaking them in bleach and rinsing away the herl. Never dyed them. You can get different shades by using strands from the eye, or further down the stem. I used them mainly for blue quills and quill gordon.

I used brown hackle stems - usually from a metz neck - for red quills. And I thought the color looked pretty good as is. I stripped them myself by soaking them in water for a bit, then scraping them between two finger nails. Wasn't very hard - and the soaking made them a bit more pliable also.

These were old time patterns that I got from Charlie Meck's books when I first started tying

 

[SteveG]

Thank you for the information guys. I'll try turkey boots and see how they do before messing with dyeing. I appreciate the help.

 

[WingQuill]

When using peacock quill, you can often get a color effect by letting a space between wraps and allowing the thread color to show through. Also, the very best quills that I have ever used were from large turkey flats that have been bleached and dyed. You can even color them with a marker. They are strong, and have a great taper. AK Best uses them on his quill flies and supplies alot of info on the net about them.

 

[sandfly]

I prefer my own brand "Quill Z"

 

[SteveG]

Sandfly, are those a synthetic? That caddis looks good.

 

[sandfly]

yep, great stuff. can be cut and comes in 6" lengths

 

[JeffK]

My best luck with dyed quill bodies is to find the dyed eyes (or whole peacock feather - sometimes you can find whole feathers for less than the eyes) and strip them in a 25% bleach solution. Also soak the quill in water with maybe a touch of glycerine to make them less brittle. Quill bodies look great, but I'm lazy these days and don't tie many in a year.

As far as picking the best peacock quills, look at the portion of the eye where the sides of the quills are nice and thick and light colored. Those are the good ones. Also, the Davy MacPhail butt first way is good.

 

[lv2nymph]

The experience you're having with the polish quills sounds like a bad batch to me I've gone through a lot of packs of those and in most every color and have found the color to be brilliant. The polish quills are perfect for the size of flies you are looking to tie, but since you have them you know that already. Do you coat your quill bodies with anything when done? I used Sally Hansens for years and it works great, the down fall is you have to wait for it to dry. I've recently started using a uv resin and its night and day. Hit it with the light and you're off and running...
The hends body quill is small like thread, the fantastic thing about the body quill is the blend/fade you can achieve with it. I've tied a ton of flies with it and the mottled effect you get with it is outstanding and they are killers. It's a translucent color, meaning the more you overlap it the more vibrant the color gets.
I've seen the whole peacock eyes dyed and stripped and have been meaning to try them, if you get ahold of some and try it I'd love to hear about it.