Male Speaker: The next step that we'll talk about is selecting and applying a golden pheasant crest feather for the tail on the salmon fly. Different tiers have different styles as far as selecting a smaller feather and using the entire feather or using a larger feather and adapting it to their use.
Probably, the most important component of a classic salmon fly as far as the overall appearance is going to be, the size and position of the tail. The tail will determine the size of the wing, the length of the wing, and the size and positioning and length of the golden pheasant topping.
There are two different types of feathers that could be used for tailing material in a classic salmon fly. In every instance, we want to select a feather that is straight and not twisted from the butt of the feather to the tip of the feather. Whether it's a long crest feather such as this or a shorter crest feather such as this, both of these feathers are straight in the same plane from tip to butt.
One choice of feather would be the smaller feather such as we have here and I've just removed the after shaft. This feather will come in and be positioned approximately so. Now, there are advantages to using this type of feather, especially if there's a tail veiling because the shorter fibers in this area will allow the tail veiling to have something to lie on. Other tiers prefer a feather that is larger and tends to splay open more back at this area, so these individual fibers are slightly more apparent. I will show you how to apply each feather, because it's slightly different in each case.
Let's take the smaller feather, and in order to minimize the bulk of the tying, we want to crush the stem at the point the feather will be tied in. The way to do that is to take some smooth nose pliers and in the plane perpendicular to the fibers simply mesh and compress the stem a half a millimeter at a time, so that basically you're walking up the feather, crushing as you go.
The reason for that is as we get out, if we needed to, toward the tip of the feather, this stem actually becomes triangular in shape and it's very hard to compress it in a horizontal plane unless you've worked your way up and made it horizontal as you've approached the triangulation.
Now that the feather has been flattened rather than stripping off these short fibers, I suggest trimming them, because the stubble will allow the thread to have material into which it can bite, if you will.
Remember it, when we tied it off the silk in the last step, we had five wraps. We're going to leave those in place in this particular circumstance, because we don't -- we want to have a thread base. We are going to wrap back to the point that the silk ends. You might notice that this feather cocks up quiet a bit as we've tied it in partly because there's a shoulder here where the silk tag drops down.
There are two ways to approach that problem. One is to put an additional thread layer such that the thread is brought up to the level of the tag. Another technique, and this maybe useful whether it cocks up or not, some tiers like the tail to lie more flat allowing for a more sleeker wing. You can take your nail and do what is a procedure called nicking. Basically, it's putting a crimp on the backside of the curve of the fly so that it lies straighter and more flat once it's tied in.
Again, touching turns, we want the hook, we want the fly, we want the feather to lie in the plane created by the hook shank and the bend of the hook such that when you look down on it, everything is in alignment. The feather can be adjusted by gently pulling under the thread wraps so that it is shorter in this area here. So if we wanted to use a shorter feather, that's the way we'd use a shorter feather with the fibers near the base left intact.
Similarly, if we want to use the larger feather rather than making any cuts or crimps, we simply put a couple of soft loops allowing the feather to be longer, and then pulling it into position, and then putting a total of five firm wraps. Notice that there may be one or two fibers that have gone astray. Those can simply be cut and will not show in the final process.
At this point once the feather for the tail has been placed in proper position, it is very reasonable to take a drop of very fine, clear head cement and apply it to those thread wraps. Once that has been secured, it's reasonable to come in with the scissors and cut off the butt of this feather right against the thread wraps. That's how you apply a golden pheasant crest feather for a tail on a salmon fly.
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