I have found a useful tool to trim large amounts of hair and fur from hides. It's an electric hair trimmer, like the barbers use. They are available pretty cheap at any of the big box stores, or larger drug stores.
You can have a lot of control about how close you shave to the hide, and you don't waste anything. Trimming fur from hides for dubbing is a tedious task using a pair of scissors. If you control the depth of each swath of the electric trimmer, you can easily control the length of the fur you are trimmming. I also use the trimmer to sculpt fish forms out of spun and packed synthetics. Have not done much work with a trimmer when tying with deer hair or the like. I also make very frequent use of a pair of wire dog grooming brushes to shred various short lengths of yarn to make dubbing. It's a fun process to blend colors and materials, and using the two brushes, the results come out very uniform. What other unusual (not normally for fly tying) tools have you found useful in your tying? Wes Wada Bend, Oregon
