Braided Mylar Tubing

[Greg Hunsicker]

How do you keep the ends from fraying and loosing the diameter and shape while working with this stuff? It seems to me that you need to secure the ends some how.

Greg

[DDRRedneck500]

if you are just sliding it over the body, they will only fray a little and its fine. you dont need to do anything about that.however if you want absolutely no fraying, just singe the end with a lighter.

[Normand]

you will need to tie down the tubing at the bend of the hook and at the eye of the hook. use your scissors to trim the frayed ends at the bend.

to keep the body at the same diameter of the tubing, you will have to build an underbody first.

[Greg Hunsicker]

Hi Thanks for the help. Just to give you a little more information what I'm doing is building the underbody then securing the tubing just behind the hook eye then rolling the tube back over the fly there by inverting the tube. I guess the idea is to end up with a clean head. The back end is tied off at the hook bend then the access is allowed to fray and trim to desired length.

Am I doing this correctly. I'm tying crappie and bluegill minnows on size 8 and 10 3XL streamer hooks.

Greg

[rrhyne56]

Greg

I ran into issues with the material sliding up and down the hook shank. My solution was to tie it in a bit farther back on the hook shank to that there was more area gripped by thread.

Now this might alter ting sequence (Mylar on before adding body) but may assist in resolving the issue if I understood it correctly.

[FishnDave]

Sounds like you're doing it correctly. One tip is to start with fairly clean cuts on each end of the mylar. If it is already seriously frayed, it won't look good at the head of the fly. So...start with a clean cut, push it just past the eye of the hook (1/4" or less usually works fine) onto the shank, and then tie it in there. A couple of loose wraps, slowly tighten, then several very tight wraps on top of that. At that point I spread a drop of glue over those threads to hold them in place, then move the thread to near the hook bend. Invert the tubing down over the hook shank, and tie off.

One thing I've also started doing to help the fly have some "body" under the tubing (medium diameter), is to cut the marabou long, and wind the excess up the hook shank.

Also...for some reason the pearl mylar tubing seems to invert more easily than the silver. It seems to be because the silver is a stiffer material?

[Rocks4Brains]

It seem to me that the tubing frays less if you lightly hold the end together with the fingers of your left hand as you push the tubing on with your right hand. I push the tubing past the thread a little, make a couple of loose loops to hold it and then finish the rest of of the wrapping.

As far as the eye end, I start the thread over the top of the tubing where I want the head of the fly to be. Once I get the thread started and a few wraps on, I pull the tubing straight up and cut it off. The eye of the hook slips though the tubing so you can cut if very close to the thread. Then its just a matter of wrapping the thread to cover the cut. The tubing might twist a little as you start the thread, but you can straighten it out after you cut it.

[jmeyerc]

Thanks guys, this is something I was wondering how to stop too..... very helpful indeed.

Jeanne