Powder Paint and Fly Tying

Something that I have been experimenting with a lot this summer (with good results) is powder paint.  It's a really fast, simple, durable method for adding some color and/or detail to your flies.  Essentially any hard, weighted item you can add to a fly can be powder painted.  Beads, Sculpin Helmets, Fish Skulls, cone heads, dumbbells, and bead chain can all be powder painted.  I have stuck with the ProTec brand powder paint for all of my needs, and there is a pretty impressive assortment of colors available.  Some are solid colors, some are "flecked" with glitter, and powder paints can be mixed/blended for unique color results.  The most common item I powder paint is the Pocket Eye Cone.  I love these cones for bigger variants of the Bow River Bugger and a few other streamer designs I am tinkering with.

Powder paint is easy to use.  You simply heat the item you want to paint, quickly dip in the powder paint, reheat the item, and it's done.  For added durability, I have read you can bake the paint on by heating your oven to the recommended temperatures (it's on the ProTec bottles and site) and baking them for a few minutes.  I have not found this to be necessary, I have not had the paint chip on flies yet.  You might wonder how you heat the cones or beads and dip them without burning yourself, and that's where toothpicks come in handy.  I wedge toothpicks into the cones or beads, heat them over a candle, and dip in the paint.

Here's a sample of a two-toned powder paint job.  I dipped the cone in all yellow paint, then reheated, and dipped only the top of the cone in a rootbeer colored paint for the two-toned effect.

Below is a pic of the staged HD Craw hooks I prepped before tying the flies.  I powder painted both the Cray Tails and the beads for belly weight to match the body of the fly.  Painting the bead makes it disappear into the dubbed body.

Something that is really nice about painting all of these coneheads and beads is that the color of the bead or cone really doesn't seem to matter.  I no longer need to purchase nickel, black, or copper cones because they will almost all be painted a different color, anyway.  There are a few exceptions to that, absolutely, but it has greatly reduced the need for several packs of different finish cones or beads and makes it easier to buy them because the specific color (which may or may not be in stock at your shop) no longer matters to me.  

If you want to give an extra level of detail or splash of color to your fly patterns, consider powder painting for your cones, beads, and eyes.  It's extremely easy, fast to apply and dry, and a single jar of ProTec is going to last you a very long time.  Having painted several dozen heads, I have hardly scratched the surface of my jars of paint.  A little truly goes a long ways.