John,

When I have used a Walton's Engine, it was to furl up snoods of horse hair to make lines with. The snoods are usually made with multiples of three hairs, one for each hook or "leaf" for lack of a better term on the engine. The lines I have seen and made tapered from the tippet end witih three hairs to a heavier section of six hairs, then nine hairs and finally twelve nearer the rod tip. When constructing lines of snoods, each snood is about 24-30 inches long and knotted together, forming the tapered line The horse hair lines are pretty dang tough considering they're made of hair, surprisingly stretchy to protect light (one hair) tippets, and are nearly invisible in the water. Should you decide to attempt a horse hair line make sure to use the white hair from the tail of a lusty stallion, nothing else will suffice.

The same procedure can be done by hand, but the Waltons Engine makes the job much simpler and very uniform once you get the hang of it.

REE