Maybe I've been lucky, but yes, I have been able to dye ostrich herl successfully more than once. Here is how I've done it:

1. Purchase natural gray colored feather dusters which have a considerable number of feathers with small dense herl barbs. Use the larger feathers as test material. The small ones are the prize and the tricky ones.

2. Soak the feathers at least over night in a degreasing detergent. I used Veniard's "Degreaser" and then a second soak in "Venpol".

3. I didn't do anything special or unique in the actual dying except maybe the use of low temperature (under 125) and Veniard dyes.

4. Upon removal from the dye bath, rinse and re-rinse the feathers. Consider shampooing them to get them as clean as possible before starting to dry them.

5. Place the wet feathers, sort of piled upon one another, between some pages of newspaper. Don't let the feathers dry. You want the excess water removed but the feathers should still be rather damp.

6. Use a good multi-setting hair dryer to blow dry each feather. Use a fairly hot setting and a strong blow. If you are cooking your fingers, the blow drying.

I know many of you say to avoid using fly tying wax in tying Salmon flies. It creates unnecessary bulk and is a deterrent to head cement penetration.

However, in tying the last 5% of the fly is where I still run into trouble and resort to using the wax like the old-timers. While using "flat" thread techniques in mounting the wings, (in my case the tying and retying), the thread is subjected to considerable strain. Here at the culmination of possibly hours of work, I quite often develop minor frays in the filaments comprising the thread. These messy frays are a serious problem. The breaking point is near. A whip finish is an adventure. A very judicious addition of wax to the thread can save the day. The thread is strengthened, frayed filaments adhere to one another, and the friction of the whip finish is "greased".

Do you proponents of "no wax" have an alternative solution to the frayed thread problem?