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Indian crow sub

3K views 7 replies 4 participants last post by  GPearson 
#1 ·
Greg

I thought I would start a new thread instead of adding to the greenhighlander thread. For crow sub I use one of three, dyed ring neck, weaver bird or flamed scarlet minivet. I have yet to tie with real crow and only have a few feather to try to duplicate. Here is a picture of all 4. Starting at the top left is ring neck and a few with my base dye only and a few batches of finished feathers. top right is
the real deal one as a single next to two feather overlapping for more color saturation. The bottom row left is weaver and right is minivet double up.

speyflyfisher
 

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#6 ·
Speyflyfisher,

Are you using the tan base sandwiched between two rubber body washers and flat steel washers clamped together with a spring clamp so only about 1/3rd of the feather is exposed and put first into an orange dye bath; that is then rinsed and put back into the washer sandwich with only about 1/5th of the feather exposed followed by putting it into a scarlet or red dye bath to dye the tips that McCorder uses?

Or are you dip dying them first with orange and then with red after the dying them the base tan color?

At any rate, you produced some nice subs.

I've been surprised at how few folks actually used scarlet minivet. Red wing blackbird also is a nice sub as are eastern cardinal feathers. Unfortunately, both the red wing blackbird and cardinal are songbirds which you cannot kill. But if you happen to find a dead one, the feathers are very nice subs for Indian Crow.
 
#8 ·
Thanks for the photos. I am using basically the same thing you are but I am never quit satisfied. Your feathers look great.

I have used some red wing black bird but the stems are stiff and vertical so it took a lot of doing to get them to lay right. I ended up liking the ring neck a bit better.

Thanks agian for taking the time to post those photos.

Greg
 
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