[teachrtec]

I have been as many of the rest of you searching for the 'magic bullet' for striping hurl. Everything seemed to require questionable chemicals or took forever. It hit me that the erasers we use in drafting are white vinyl in stead of the rough pink pearl style one on a #2 pencil. Tried one and it worked better. Still seemed to take forever. Soooo.... I decided to make a device to do the task.

I took the vinyl eraser and cut a slug out with a round punch.


Found the center and put a small nail through it. Put it in the Jacobs chuck of my bench top drill press. Any drill you could mount or clamp would probably do as well.


If I pulled the hurl against the wheel tip first the fuzz just rolled off neat as can be.



It took about 30 sec to do one piece of hurl as opposed to a 1 minute 20 sec by hand.

Thought I would share my crazy thought with you all for opinions. If you use it and come up with improvements please share em with me and everybody else.

[Rod Champion]

Pretty neat , Tech.

[teachrtec]

[streamer]

I need to buy more power tools!

That's very cool, Brad. I can probably rig my drill up for that. Doing a bunch at one time like that would certainly speed up my tying.

Thanks,
Jule

[teachrtec]

Power tools are about as bad as fly fishing for me

[gqualls]

Nice trick, Brad.

I do use a different method to strip peacock eyes I use a large pyrex dish, and clorox and water at a 2 to 3 ratio (2 parts clorox, 3 parts water). I put the liquids together and stir it up. I place several peacock eyes in the solution and wait about 5 minutes. I then grab the butt end of the eyes and swirl them around in the solution. Inspect the stems to see if they are clean. If not, let them soak 1-2 minutes longer. You'll have a beautiful peacock eye stripped clean and then you can pick your stripped herl accoring to size.

I have been told this method breaks down the enamel on the stem thus weakening it and causing material to break after a fish or two. I have always coated my stripped peacock stems with super glue of zap-a-gap. After 15-20 fish the fly is usually a mess and I have to tie on another.

By the way, I have used the method on strung herl with lousy results. My experience was the strung herl became too brittle. I have no idea why. I pretty much just use eyes. I was at the zoo earlier this summer and SC with family and in the gift shop they had bags of peacock eyes for $3. There were 14 beautiful eyes inside.

Thanks for sharing.

[overbrook]

Originally Posted by gqualls

I was at the zoo earlier this summer and SC with family and in the gift shop they had bags of peacock eyes for $3. There were 14 beautiful eyes inside

Was this at the Columbia zoo?? we got a family pass.....might have to go visit the in-laws and pick up some feathers

[gqualls]

Tom,

It was a small zoo in Myrtle Beach. Must have been 70-80 peacocks walking around.

[Rod Champion]

I use straight chlorox for 1 minute- during this time I am swishing the eyes around and rubbing my fingers over them , cleaning the stems. Then to the water foccet they go. Then rub them thru paper towel. Then a quick hair dryer blow dry. They are ready to go. I also zap-a-gap the stems after tying. Have begin zaping the thread first , then wrapping stems. Works nicely.

[flytire]

Originally Posted by teachrtec

It took about 30 sec to do one piece of hurl as opposed to a 1 minute 20 sec by hand.

thats a different way of stripping herl but why the need for speed??