[VFB] Tony's necks, part 1

[DonO]

Tony Wrote: Don, The photos are on their way There are a couple with the price still on the bag.. Feel free to make comments on the list. We can all learn. Tony Tony, Got your photos and checked them out. (If interested, either Tony or I can forward the photos to those interested) Technically, speckling, barring, and mottling in neck and saddle hackles are somewhat similar in genetic make-up.  In other pattern feathers, speckling and spotting are totally different, as they form patterns in conjunction with neighboring feathers.  This is the miracle of genetic blueprinting- how one feather knows what it's naighbor looks like, to complete a pattern.  But in grizzly and ginger barring, the bars are randomly located as opposed to neighboring feathers, but have definite spacing along its own length. In hackles, spacing of the color bars is crucial to the look of the palmered feather.  I'll send you a photo of a Speckled Champagne Badger feather and fly.  The speckles on the individual barbs are actually one piece of a dark cross-bar on the unprepped hackle as it lays naturally closed up.  It's just that the 'bars' are so fine that they are more like lines, thus creating 'speckles' when prepped and palmered. Now on a good cree feather, the color bars are wider, so that when prepped, the color bands on each barb are wide.  What gives cree it's unique appeal is that the color bands go straight across the natural (unprepped) feather and at such a spacing that each barb has all three colors (in the larger sizes- say 16 up).  So some tips are of each 3 colors- black, ginger, cream, while the rest of each barb has the other two colors.  (Midge hackles have gotten too small for them to accomplish this.)  Also the 3 color bands must be completely across the feather.  If the black forms a chevron in the center, with ginger and cream barring, it is only a ginger variant, not a true cree.  I have some light, med., and dark barred ginger Whiting saddles that are just beautiful, but are not cree and don't look just like cree when palmered.  If I was going to pick two feathers to sub for cree, I'd pick a grizzly dyed cream, and a furnace brown. The brown and cream will blend to give some illusion of ginger.   See part 2