YLI Silk & Wax

[wayneb]

Hi All;

Just obtained some YLI silk last night and was trying it out and had a few questions/observations. When waxing silk thread how do you go about it? Do you pull an amount outside the bobbin, apply wax then rewind it? Or are their other methods?

Waxing the thread seems to make a big difference in the translucent qualities of Pearsalls but not so much with YLI. Pearsalls seemed to become more translucent with wax then did YLI. I should qualify this statement by saying I used Wapsi dubbing wax in the orange tube since this is all I have at this time. i ordered some beeswax and string instrument resin to play with but still awaiting it's arrival.

Couple other observations: YLI is not as slippery, seems thinner, and not as strong as Pearsalls. It does seem to be easier for me to control with a bobbin, probably due to it not being as slippery as Pearsalls. If you get the slightest nick in YLI, it's breaking strength decreases significantly.

Wayneb

[wayneb]

Hi Mike;

thanks for the quick reply. I was a little tired last night whilst tying, sometimes that clouds my observations. I should get a much better feel for tying with silk in the next few days. I did tie up a few partridge with purple and partridge with green soft hackles and really like the looks. I'm finally getting the hang of tying a very sparse hackle, my ties are finally starting to resemble the photos I've seen posted here. Now I just have to work on even sparser hackle and then getting the heads smaller!

I have beeswax,rosin, and a starling pelt on the way, can't wait to start using those!

Wayneb

[wayneb]

Hi Mike;

I can just imagine the responses from my wife first while I'm gathering pine sap and then, as I play Mr. wizard reducing it to rosin! I may have to try this if the rosin I've purchased doesn't give me satisfactory results.

I have a pound of beeswax and both light and dark colored bow rosin on order awaiting delivery. Beeswax is not as easy to find locally as I thought it would be. I finally found some but it was $20.00 per pound. Purchased off ebay $6.25 a pound with shipping.

I'll have to let you know how my wax making adventures turn out.

Wayne

[Liam]

Wayneb- I don't know if you have tried this, but one thing I like to do if I am trying to achieve a really sparse hackle is strip the barbs off of one side of the stem. I think it may weaken the stem a bit but I haven't had too much trouble breaking while winding.

[DNicolson]

Hans has an excellent tutorial on his site on this very subject,
i.e. stripping off one side of the hackle.

[mvendon]

Deleted

[wayneb]

Mike: I just love that poem, very appropriate! So, when you count barbs how many are you looking to spread around a hook?? Right now I'm using Partridge, won't have any starling for a few days. Can't wait to give it a try.

Liam & Dnicholson: Thanks guys, stripping the barbs off one side of the feather made all the difference, I'm at the point where I can count the number of barbs!

Mark: Thanks for the photos comparing the two brands of silk. It's real hard to tell one brand from the other in your photos, especially when waxed. I think YLI looks very comparable to Pearsalls.

Thanks to everyone for all the great advice;

Wayne