Although this is a great fur, there are some very important points in its use:
The skin upon which you find the Nutria is good leather, provided it has been cured and dyed well.
The fur itself consists of the most diverse fibres I have ever worked with; the guard hairs are relatively short compared to other furs, perhaps as long as 5 cm at best. The guard hairs are also very fine at the base near the skin, gently thick up, and the perfectly and gradually taper to a fin tip. The underfur is very short, at best about 1.5 cm, but very dense, yet fine.
It is quite important to very neatly and carefully trim a section of the fur (both guard hairs and underfur) very close to the skin with fine sharp scissors.
You may then wish to either keep both the underfur and guard hairs together in the same bunch to tie in, as I will be demonstrating, or it is very easy to pull out all the underfur and just use the guard hairs. The underfur can be used separately as dubbing for fly bodies.
The pelt or skin with the black dyed Nutria (the natural is a somewhat mottled mid-brown).
The skin side of the pelt shows the relative proportions of the underfur to the guard hairs:
A small bunch of guard hairs and underfur is cut from the pelt:
The combined bunch of underfur and guard hairs is tied in, in this case, as an underwing:
The excess butt ends of the Nutria is trimmed with scissors, and I feel that adding some varnish to the tied in ends of the fur is important for security, mainly as the guard hairs are so fine at the base:
Another small bunch of Nutria is then added:
and the completed tie, incorporating the Nutria as underwing:
