What products could be used as substitutes for Pearsall’s Marabou Silk Floss and Pearsall’s Silk thread?
I’ve used Janome silk threads in place of Pearsall’s. Their red, green, and yellow are a bit different in color than P’s, and a tad bigger in diameter. You can split it, tho. The spools i got had 200m of material on em. ALOT more than is on P’s spools. Bought em, rather stole em, at an OLD Ma and Pa sewing store about 10 years ago. $1.22 each. I never used P’s marabou floss, altho i got at least a dozen spools of it.
Lastchance,
There are two reasons I can think of why you would want to use Pearsalls:
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It has been around unchanged for about 100 years so you can tie a traditional pattern with the exact stuff our ancestors used.
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Silk has a rather unique property in that it turns translucent when wet and that may (or may not) be important to a particular fly pattern. I have heard it said that because it is an insect protein, it has some magical attractive properties to trout, which like to eat insects.
If you don’t care about either on these, then any thread or floss should do. If you do care, the Pearsalls thread is probably the easiest silk thread to find these days. I think Hairline dubbing distributes it in the US. Alot of fly shops will have it. Bearlodge Anglers, who are a sponser on this site, have the thread and a couple other brands of silk floss. The only thing I haven’t been able to find in the US is Pearsalls floss in primrose. You can get the thread but not the floss. Go figure…