# Making your own tying brush?



## SamK (Sep 19, 2017)

I'm no pro but you should be able to go to Lowe's and pick up some heavier gauge wire to spin up those brushes.


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## salt_fly (Apr 23, 2012)

LifeOnFly said:


> Trying to make my own brushes everything from ep to fox fur to sf blend. I made a table for it and it came out great but now i'm trying to figure out the best wire and size to use, any thoughts or input?
> 
> I currently have x small UTC and man is that stuff easy to break... any help would be greatly appreciated.. Thank!


Go to Hobby Lobby or Michael's and get stainless steel beading wire for making jewelry. I forget the actual size in thousandths of an inch, but just look at the different sizes and get one that's not too small. Works great for me.


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## LifeOnFly (Aug 1, 2017)

Thanks guys! Great advice hobby lobby is about a minute away from my house!


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## rakeel (Apr 9, 2014)

I use 32 gauge stainless steel craft wire. You gotta spin it really tight before it breaks.


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## LifeOnFly (Aug 1, 2017)

Going to hobby lobby right now to pick some up, I'll let you guys know how I make out thanks again for the help.


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## LifeOnFly (Aug 1, 2017)

So hobby lobby didn't have anything thinner than 32 gauge feels way stronger compared to the UTC in small but it definitely is bulkier (obviously).

Found this wire diameter chart too guess I just have to play around with it. http://www.swtu.org/pdfs/fly_tying/Wapsi-Wire-Sizes.pdf


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## backbone (Jan 4, 2016)

I have tried before and have failed miserably!
Good luck! Lets see the progress.


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## LifeOnFly (Aug 1, 2017)

So the baitfish is a sf blend brush head and sf tail

The brown brush is just a craftfur with ep sparkle just to test the 32g wire it's a little thick might be able to get away with 34g if I can find some


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## bryson (Jun 22, 2015)

LifeOnFly said:


> So the baitfish is a sf blend brush head and sf tail
> 
> The brown brush is just a craftfur with ep sparkle just to test the 32g wire it's a little thick might be able to get away with 34g if I can find some


Looks good! This is something I've been wanting to try out. Thanks for posting this info up; it's really helpful.


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## rakeel (Apr 9, 2014)

LifeOnFly said:


> So the baitfish is a sf blend brush head and sf tail
> 
> The brown brush is just a craftfur with ep sparkle just to test the 32g wire it's a little thick might be able to get away with 34g if I can find some


I've personally never had any issues with the 32 gauge wire. The stuff I have looks the same size as the stuff used in actual EP brushes or at least as far as I can tell.

Here's some AWS 34 gauge stainless wire on amazon. Little pricey but you get 250' of it which would last you forever

http://a.co/6Ddfdye


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## LifeOnFly (Aug 1, 2017)

No problem Bryson, hope it helped you as much as it did me. 

Thanks Rakeel probably going to pick some of that up and try it.


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## bryson (Jun 22, 2015)

Would you happen to have a picture of the table you're using?


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## LifeOnFly (Aug 1, 2017)

Made it for about 25 dollars just missing a spring in between the right side.


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## bryson (Jun 22, 2015)

LifeOnFly said:


> Made it for about 25 dollars just missing a spring in between the right side.


Look great! Thanks!


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## backbone (Jan 4, 2016)

I ordered that SS wire, going to give it another shot. Thanks for the inspiration.


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## LifeOnFly (Aug 1, 2017)

Backbone let me know how you make out please.


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## blackmagic1 (Jul 3, 2014)

Are those magnets on there?


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## LifeOnFly (Aug 1, 2017)

Yes they are, but after making a few brushes I realized while straightening out the fibers the magnets were not strong enough to hold up the piece. To fix the problem I just Drilled a hole and put a piece of steel rod that is removable when I want to drop the tray.


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## LowHydrogen (Dec 31, 2015)

I make brushes on the fly using GSP while I'm tying the fly. It's the same principal as the wire but not as stiff, and easier for me to make precise wraps. 

Pull out and start a large dubbing loop, tie back in so you just have a loop, lightly wax the loop, hold two fingers in bottom of loop, start at the top where the loop is the tightest adding material, slowly working to the bottom and letting the loop get smaller by adding a dubbing spinner in place of fingers and increasing tension, eventually you're fingers will be out of the loop with just the dubbing spinner under tension, spin tight, comb out while under tension, start wrapping. Goes really quick once you get the hang of it. The advantage the wire method has is that I guess you could pre-make the brushes and store for later use if you needed to. 

Happy tying.


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## Backwater (Dec 14, 2014)

I made a small table with a drop away board about 2 yrs ago since I got tired of the cost of decent brushes, as well as not getting them exactly the way you want it. Some how I picked up a spool of SS wire many yrs ago (maybe 15yrs now) at a craft store and it has the same dia wire as the EP brushes (well may, the next size bigger). Anyways, it works good and it doesn't break that easy.

Problem is, it's very time consuming and the only way I figured out a way to make it more time efficient is to whip a number of them off. But it's a time commitment to do so.

One thing I like about making your own is, you can use up leftover materials and materials you are tired of or have too much of, to make something really cool and useful (when other stuff is added to it). I'll also save up the marabou stems on my large hackles and mix that marabou in to the mix. It's kind of fun to add different colors, different materials, a bit of flash and even rubber legs to it.

Caution..... Remember, the wire adds to the weight of the fly. So keep that in mind when you are adding lead dumbbell eyes to the fly, as it can make it too heavy to cast it properly. So on a fly that you normally use a size sm painted lead dumbbell eye, step down to an ex sm.


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## LifeOnFly (Aug 1, 2017)

LowHydrogen said:


> I make brushes on the fly using GSP while I'm tying the fly. It's the same principal as the wire but not as stiff, and easier for me to make precise wraps.
> 
> Pull out and start a large dubbing loop, tie back in so you just have a loop, lightly wax the loop, hold two fingers in bottom of loop, start at the top where the loop is the tightest adding material, slowly working to the bottom and letting the loop get smaller by adding a dubbing spinner in place of fingers and increasing tension, eventually you're fingers will be out of the loop with just the dubbing spinner under tension, spin tight, comb out while under tension, start wrapping. Goes really quick once you get the hang of it. The advantage the wire method has is that I guess you could pre-make the brushes and store for later use if you needed to.
> 
> Happy tying.


I have done A Lot of this and it is great but wanted to just be able to make a whole bunch of brushes at a time. Thanks for the info though!


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## LifeOnFly (Aug 1, 2017)

Backwater said:


> I made a small table with a drop away board about 2 yrs ago since I got tired of the cost of decent brushes, as well as not getting them exactly the way you want it. Some how I picked up a spool of SS wire many yrs ago (maybe 15yrs now) at a craft store and it has the same dia wire as the EP brushes (well may, the next size bigger). Anyways, it works good and it doesn't break that easy.
> 
> Problem is, it's very time consuming and the only way I figured out a way to make it more time efficient is to whip a number of them off. But it's a time commitment to do so.
> 
> ...


I really like the fact that you can put almost anything in them. They make really unique flies and
not to mention it's still fun for me making them. The 32g wire I have picked up from the craft store is the best so far I have used still a little thick, still waiting on the 34g off of amazon.


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## Finn Maccumhail (Apr 9, 2010)




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## permitchaser (Aug 26, 2013)

I am a pretty simple fly tier. Don't have a clue how you us those brushes. I tie EP or Congo bait fish but I've not used a brush


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## bryson (Jun 22, 2015)

permitchaser said:


> I am a pretty simple fly tier. Don't have a clue how you us those brushes. I tie EP or Congo bait fish but I've not used a brush


Pretty straightforward -- just treat them like hackle.


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## TheAdamsProject (Oct 29, 2007)

Still prefer the dubbing loop rather than making a brush.


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## Backwater (Dec 14, 2014)

LifeOnFly said:


> I have done A Lot of this and it is great but wanted to just be able to make a whole bunch of brushes at a time. Thanks for the info though!


One thing I forgot to mention is that most of us by nature will add too much material to the brush. In the end, the flies end up too stiff and bulky. So I tend to lean towards more sparser than towards adding too much material. That way, the fly still pushes water, but doesn't show too much to the fish and has better movement in the water. So in this case, less is more and like NativeJax mentioned, if you are going real sparse, it's simpler to just learn how to efficiently use a dubbing loop for smaller, sparser stuff.


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## texasag07 (Nov 11, 2014)

Simpler and in my opinion a quicker method than creating a dubbing loop is to take a needle and insert it in the middle of the thread( I use 210 denier) the gently slide the needle down towards the bobbin and about 80 percent of the time I can get a 3-6" split section of thread(don't pull to hard on the thread/bobbin before inserting the needle).

Now insert your materials between the split thread. Spin the bobbin a couple of times and then go to wrapping it in.

I made the video Finn posted and I still go back and forth on making my own brushes, versus the method I mentioned above. If I have a bunch of one pattern to do where I want a lot of consistency I prefer the brush.


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## LifeOnFly (Aug 1, 2017)

Backwater said:


> One thing I forgot to mention is that most of us by nature will add too much material to the brush. In the end, the flies end up too stiff and bulky. So I tend to lean towards more sparser than towards adding too much material. That way, the fly still pushes water, but doesn't show too much to the fish and has better movement in the water. So in this case, less is more and like NativeJax mentioned, if you are going real sparse, it's simpler to just learn how to efficiently use a dubbing loop for smaller, sparser stuff.


Im buy far no expert what so ever at making brushes/tying with them, but say you are tying a ep baitfish that you want a big-bigger profile making a brush to me is so much more effective and you can build exactly what you want with trimming. I can make one of these 2 inch ep brushes in probably 3 minutes and get 2-3 flies out of them and then the flies take me hardly any time at all. I guess it's really up to the person and application. For some or most of my bonefish flies I do use dubbing loops to create bodies and they turn out almost identical to what I can do with a brush but it takes a lot longer (at least for me) to fill a dubbing loop every time with the fibers I want then to make 3 brushes before hand then sit down and knock the flies out. I also feel it's a bit more consistent.


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