FLYMPH FORUM

I'm back home in New Orleans after a month fishing in cooler climes. Within the next few weeks or so, I'm going to try organizing my feathers better, and I'm seeing that pre-plucking may be in my future....

But before I go down that fowl hole, I'm hoping some of you veterans of the fluff might chime in on what time and experience has taught you, in terms of pre-plucking to better organize your feathers for storage and tying... (here you can hear my small bleating cry for help...)

I leave mine on the skin, with the skins in poly bags, hanging on peg board. When I'm going to do a tying session I grab the skin off the wall, pull the feathers I'll need, plus a couple just in case, and hang the skin back up in it's place. That method has worked for me for 50+years, so maybe I'm just used to it. Looking forward to hearing what my fellow feather buffs do.

Al Troth used glassine envelopes as did many other tyers in days before zip lock bags.

https://books.google.com/books?id=pwrLa ... wV6BAgMEAc

A case with glassine envelopes:

https://archive.org/details/troutflyi00 ... 1/mode/1up

I pluck them off the hide for the night's tying. I keep my necks in a plastic shoebox.

i leave them on the skin, in the zip lock bag and pluck only when tying that particular pattern

i usually tie 1 of a pattern so i have no need to pluck the skin bare

Unless you intend to tie a gross of one size of one pattern in one session like Al Troth did as a commercial tier I suggest plucking what you need as you go.
What commercial fly tiers like Al Troth would do is cut necks in sections by size. You can measure hackle size on the neck and determine with good accuracy where sizes begin and end. You can then cut the neck up in sections diagonally by size using a razor blade. A lot easier than plucking individual feathers from an entire neck. The hackle growers sell their sized packs of hackle like this and they learned this from commercial tiers.

Hm. I was hoping to find at least a few people who do or have done some significant pre-plucking themselves, but apparently it's not much of a thing any more. Or maybe just an occasional or passing thing not worth mentioning. Or maybe the pre-pluckers are too busy pre-plucking....

I do pre-pluck etc for each batch of flies, I'm just thinking to expand that a bit...

If I get there I'll post my results for anyone interested. If I don't, well, it won't be the first time I've been daydreaming about ways to be better organized.

Anyways, thanks for everyone's input.

chugbug, Howdy;

Don't feel disappointed, I'm of the thought that it's one of those 'each to their own'
sort of decisions (pun NOT intended).
One of the books I have is one of A. K. Best's. He talks about 'plucking' but also
mentions that he did it as a 'Pro' tyer. One of those folks that mass produce their
flies by the hundreds or dozens at the least. That way he'd know he could just pullout a
drawer (small?), of a certain size/bird/color.
Personally, I don't go to those lengths, my mind doesn't find that amount of OCDness
to be a comfortable area to live in. So, ... 'each to their own', I've got other things to
to do with my time then sit and sort feathers. I'll find mine as I need them, more enjoyable
(to me), that way.

hank

Sounds about right Hank. My wife and I moved to a new city and a small house (no garage, workshop, office, den..., not much extra space) close to five years ago, and I'm probably just going through a second wave of getting my stuff the way I want it.

I'm no production tyer, for sure, but I do like me a system

Old school storage: