Four compact dubbing boxes each with distinctly different dubbings inside. Nice little plastic boxes, eight compartments, plastic hinge and clip. About half the size of the dubbing boxes I have, but this size is neat, especially handy for travel kits and the like.

To get to the fluff I have to open the box, no hole to dispense it through. I guess I could drill a few holes if it really bothered me.

Antron dubbing
One of the first synthetic dubbings, Antron is a brand name which covers a lot of material. The common denominators seem to be bright, glistening colours and long fibre length (ie long staple.) Coarser forms of Antron don’t take too well to being cut short, it's smooth and slippery and the fibres don't really catch and grip on each other so it’s a difficult material to twist or spin onto thread. However, Antron can be cut short and mixed with other fibres, often natural dubbing, which spin more readily, in that type of mix Antron brings colour and/or glister while the natural dubbing holds the dubbing together.

In this selection there are at least two, possibly three different materials as far as I can see. There seems to be a couple of different textures, some soft, fine fibres some coarser. The grey dubbing seems to twist onto thread fairly easily. For the longer more conventional Antron I’d suggest trapping a few fibres on the hook, then twisting it around the thread.

Squirrel fur
Not what I expected in this box. Squirrel dubbing is usually a dyed mix of guard and under-fur, natural squirrel guard hairs are barred, the underfur is varying shades of grey and the guard colour varies according to species of squirrel. When you dye natural squirrel body fur you get fairly muted dubbing with flecks of brighter colour where the guard hair was white. The staple is short and the texture tends to be ‘spiky’ – a lovely alternative to hare.

The hair in these compartments are all the same colour, the texture is soft, less spike than I expect, and the staple is a little longer than I expect from grey squirrel. So I assume this is not from grey squirrel, and I also assume the hair was bleached. The end result is a palate of attractive subtle colours, on a fine, soft dubbing. The fine fibres seem a little slippery so from the box this is not the easiest stuff to twist onto thread. For me, as squirrel dubbing, this lacks the spike and the busy mix of shades I expect, however I would happily use this where I might use a rabbit dubbing, when I want a tight, smooth body.

Mature seal’s fur
Seal’s fur dubbing has been used in tying for more than a century. Mature seal is not what most tyers who use the stuff know, or what most books mean by seal’s fur, which is a softer, glossier hair, naturally off-white and all the slightly crinkled fibres are pretty much the same type of hair. I assume mature seal comes from a different species of seal and, given the descriptive name, probably an older animal.

The hair in this selection is a mix of guard and under-fur. That fine under-fur twists up easily and holds the longer guard hairs in place when I twist a tuft onto thread. The result is very spiky indeed, especially when I brush it out a little.

Flash Brite
Talk about bright, this stuff gleams! Flash Brite illustrates what synthetic fibres can bring to dubbing, no natural fibre can get anywhere near the flash and glint of this type of stuff.

Flash Brite is quite slippery, long, straight reasonably fine fibres. I would tend to mix a little Flash Brite into a softer natural fibre to control the gleam and to make a dubbing which should take to thread more readily.

The colour selection is OK, purple and blue are not the most useful colours, on my bench, so those would last rather a long time. The rest will mix in readily with a range of tying colours and soon be used up.