From the Acme department at willfishforwork.com. This whole episode started last spring on the tip that a large woolly bugger tied with a crosscut muskrat collar was a killer for smallies on [name redacted] reservoir in Montana. I had other projects going and let this one stew till I accidentally bumped into a source of whole ‘rat hides from a local furrier over the holiday. Finally, with hide in hand I just needed to figure out how to cut it into strips.
As most tiers and furriers know, cutting with the grain or the direction that the fur lays is pretty straight forward. Cutting across the grain is more complicated if you are trying to preserve the long guard hairs that give the hair motion in the water. So, after a little brainstorming I came up with a cutting device (albeit crude, but effective) that works pretty good for doing crosscut zonker strips.
Cutting blade slots
First I took a 2×4 I had laying around and measured it out in 3/16″ increments for about 3″. I took a jig saw and made cuts about a 1/2″ deep at each mark.
Spacers to raise the level of the blades
I didn’t worry about the length of the blade cut because I put little cardboard spacers in the bottoms of the cuts to raise the the level of the cutting blades.
Next I broke out the 5-minute epoxy and mixed up a small batch of glue and took a very pointed tool and dribbled and poked the glue down into the slots being careful not to get the glue on the spacers. Then I CAREFULLY put in #11 Xacto knife blades with the blades facing into the board.
Adding in #11 Xacto knife blades
Then I positioned each blade using the the flat side of the board as a guide before the glue set up. Don’t be afraid to use a little glue here. Once you have them in place pull out the spacers. Having a paper towel and bandages at hand nearby would be prudent. I poked myself once and cut myself once. The beauty of these blades is that it doesn’t hurt when you cut yourself bad enough to bleed yourself out within minutes, a small consolation for poor dexterity.
Blades in and some new zonker strips
So this is the finished zonker strip cutter. Freddie Krueger would love this. Note the lack of blood? I stemmed the flow before I took the picture. So, to use it lay your hide hair side down with the hair flow (or grain) facing right to left (or vice versa) so you are cutting across it. Push the hide down and force the blades up through it and pull keeping the hide tight against the board.
Crosscut Muskrat Zonker Strip
And finally, a crosscut muskrat zonker strip. This piece is off a scrap I used for testing. A whole hide would yield enough material to tie several dozen streamers and buggers. This actually opens up a whole new world of crosscut material. I’ll be looking at all those road killed tabby’s in a totally different light. They might actually serve some sort of useful purpose! The whole project including the hide cost $20.
Now if you want to make regular zonker strips, strips cut with the grain you can of course use this same setup. I found the one below at the wonderful world of YouTube and it looks pretty cool too and could probably be adapted to do crosscut zonker strips by screwing it down to a board and cutting like I described above. The thing I like about this is that you can adjust the width of the cuts by adjusting the washer spacing.
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