Furled Bodies

[Betty Hiner]

Mike,
Thank you for that idea!! I can weave, BUT, I can also furl a la Bluegill, maybe half a dozen finished flies in the time it takes me to weave just one!!

I'm all for quick and easy!!!

[mickalo]

Mike,
Thank you for that idea!! I can weave, BUT, I can also furl a la Bluegill, maybe half a dozen finished flies in the time it takes me to weave just one!!

I'm all for quick and easy!!!

Betty, here's a link to that tussle bug if you your interested. He lays it out very well for the weave pattern. http://www.loup-garou.net/tussle.html

I've been trying to master the shuttle weave, but that's a really tricky weave and takes a lot of patience .

Mike

[Bass_Bug]

Betty, here's a link to that tussle bug if you your interested. He lays it out very well for the weave pattern. http://www.loup-garou.net/tussle.html

I've been trying to master the shuttle weave, but that's a really tricky weave and takes a lot of patience .

Mike

Mike, I like that weave techniqe, looks very simple.

Here are a couple of my Damsels and a Dragon. The top Damsel was made with 1 strand or yarn, the second, was made with 2. The Dragon was made with 3.

This other pic is the only weave I've tried. Shooting for 2 colors, one on top, one on bottom. After a couple tries I got it to look CLOSE to the pattern I was trying to copy. It's hard to a get a good pic showing the side without the legs getting in the way. The good looking one was the pattern, what it supposed to look like.

[mickalo]

Those weaves look great, nice job. Once you master the granny knot weave they look very nice. Add that little bit depth and appeal to the fly IMHO.

I'd post some pics I have but my camera is no longer with us ..... lost it a couple of months ago somewhere! Just not in the budget for a new one yet

Mike

[bugman]

Yep any yarn will work. Antron is just a trademarked name for a nylon primarily used in the carpet business. Fly tying uses it because of it durability, and likely because there's a Wapsi packaging facility close to a carpet mill somewhere? Who knows?

Most yarns are nylon or acrylic, another type of polymer fiber. Orlon is a trademarked name for acrylic fiber. Wool yarn is common, and cotton is available, but cotton will absorb water, wool and all the synthetic/polymer fiber s will not. So unless you're tying a sub-surface fly, Use anything but cotton.

I use any nylon/acrylic I find in the color I'm looking for. Go to the big craft stores and look for 'plastic canvas yarn'. It's usually sold in mini-skeins about the size of a big magic marker.

These 4 are acrylic 10yrd-skeins I picked up for 25? each in a clearance bin at Michaels. The blue is 20yrds and was 99? regular price. It doesn't say what it's made of. (pencil shown for scale).

that stuff works good fer several body types... i tie flies with weaved bodies as well and you can use this yarn as it is for braiding size 10 or12 flies or take out strands as needed for smaller weaved paterns...

[Bass_Bug]

The yarn topic made me remember a good yarn material source. My teenage son was into camo everything when he started hunting a few years ago. He wanted his grandma to knit him a scarf with the camo-colored variegated yarn he saw an WallyWorld. I was checking out the left over and realized it had 9 different colors from black, 3 shades of tan to brown and 5 shades of green (light olive to dark olive brown). Each color about 8 inches before fading into the next. I cut it by color, sorted it and bundled each color of about 25 pieces. Thinking if one can buy 9 colors of earth tones for a couple bucks, what else is out there? So now I check out the full size yarn skeins whenever possible and found a variegated chenille with many possible colors.