Cutting Rabbit Strips for Dummies....

What starts out as a good idea, with good intentions and positive vibes turned out to not be so true. After reading GlobalFlyFisher's article "Cutting and buying zonker strips" about cutting your own zonker strips had my confidence high in replicating this. Martin Joergensen would have more experience in doing this if he felt confident enough to create a how to post about it. Me however, am one of those people who write a blog post about how things didn't go as planned. This is what I used for my zonker cutting experiment.

Tools of the trade

• Rabbit Hide (Tanned)
• Craft Blade 
• Gold Marker
• Push pins
• Ruler

Buying and Selecting your hide
 I'll start from the start. I had hoped to sell my product to some friends for a modest price just enough to make some cash at it. I had expected the hides to be around $10-$15 CDN, when I arrived at the store they were double than what I expected. A full tanned rabbit/hare hide was $30 CDN and natural hare hide ranged from $15-$20 CDN. Now this is likely much cheaper in your area as I am currently in Goose Bay, Labrador and inflation rates are higher up here. I had intended on buying a few to try out, but I was side tracked by a very nice black fox tail that screamed hairwing salmon flies. I left the store with a black tanned hide of rabbit, and the fox tail. The key in having the best quality and most movement in your zonker strip, you must select a quality tanned hide. This means a hide with little scrap skin, thinnest leather, and thickest fur. A thick hide will not only make it harder to cut, but significantly decrease the movement of the strip when your fly is in the water. Scrap skin is considered to be loose, dangly pieces of skin on the underside of the hide, showing poor workmanship. It gets in the way, and is just a pain when marking lines and cutting your strips.

Guidelines
Back to the rabbit, first I took a large ruler and made lines the full length of the hide about 1/4 in apart. The width of the strip is completely up to you, and really is a great benefit to cutting your own strips. Normally black marker is used to draw the lines, but it wasn't visible on a black hide; I used a gold marker instead.  It really doesn't matter to me if I have gold colour on the bottom of my strips. Some may not like that and should use a colour that matches the hide colour. It is key to draw your lines lengthwise, rather than sideways to ensure you cut zonker strips, feel free do it sideways for crosscut strips. Note: the hair on the sides of the skin grows in that direction, it isn't great for small zonker strips, and should be used for crosscut strips, magnum strips on large flies or shaved for dubbing. You've also probably noticed that I have left quite a bit of room above my perpendicular line, that area of the hide was very thick with fur and skin. This can be used in the same way as the sides.

Scraps and Dubbing ready to be mixed

Take out the Knife..
Cutting with the hair creates a nice rear-ward facing strip of hair the makes perfect leech or baitfish patterns when lashed to a hook. When cutting you want to leave a good portion of skin attached at the "top" of the hide to keep everything tight. the key in cutting zonker strips, or any fur patch really is to not cut the hair itself, just the hide. Cutting with nothing to bear on, suspended is the best way to achieve a clean cut. Unlike using Joergensen's vise technique, I used push pins to hold the skin down to a wooden working surface. While pulling back I tightened the hide making it easy to cut, and holding it up off of the wood. This worked somewhat well, I found it hard to keep a straight line. Also, as I neared the bottom of the hide I found myself cutting toward me, and off of the guidelines. Thus narrowing the continuing strips, leading to diagonal cuts and hair coming off the strip on an angle rather then back over the hide. Some fly tyers leave the hide connected at the bottom, but I found that cutting the bottom of the strip clean from the hide keeps the work area clean. The now cut strips can be moved off to the side and out of the way. I think that creating a wooden jig to hold the hide on the top and the bottom tightly, and with no flat surface to bear a knife on underneath would work quite well. Maybe even better than Joergensen's technique. Continue to cut your strips across the hide, until you reach the side where the hair starts to grow off to the side. Again, like the first you can discard these for dubbing, make cross cuts or magnum strips.

Looking good!

Continue cutting your hide until you have cut as many strips as desired, or capable of doing without going crosseyed. Feel free to hang up outside for a few minutes to let the wind blow off the stray hairs. To store cut the tabs free and package your material in medium sized sandwich bags.


Thanks for reading,
Happy Tying!