FLYMPH FORUM

Hey guys! A long time ago when I was learning to tie catskill style dry flies I remember seeing a video of Joe Fox tying some red quills or something. The video showed the spool of thread he was using and explained it was treated with the Dette secret family wax recipe. But it wasn't the first 18" or so that was treated, it was the entire spool. I had always wondered how he accomplished this. Did he soak the whole damn thing? Surely not....

Fast forward a couple years and last night I'm thumbing trough Bergman's Trout. I happened to land on a page that showed a diagram of a contraption he had build for doing this very thing. Basically a tin can with a loop of wire or eye bolt down inside it. A spool of thread on one side and a reel on the opposite side. The tread comes off the spool, trough the eye bolt in the wax as you reel from the other side.


Has anyone ever done something like this or built this contraption? Any tips? Do you have to use a less sticky version of your wax recipe so it doesn't harden in to one big mass? I can't see why he used a reel instead of putting it directly on to a new spool but he could have been tying with silk in his fingers and not off a bobbin. I think I'm going to give it a try.

I added a picture of the thread waxing contraption to your post (hope you don't mind).

I have not tried this myself. Generally I wax my tying thread during the tying process, stripping off 8 to 10 inches of thread and pulling it across a disk of tying wax, then rewinding the thread back onto the spool. After a while, it just became part of my normal tying routine. The nice part is being able to switch tying wax, to slightly adjust the shade of the tying thread (white bees wax, when I want to preserve the thread color, or very dark cobblers wax when I want to darken threads). Cobblers wax on primrose silk gives a very nice translucent olive body.

You may want to contact Joe Fox, at Dette's fly shop. The Dette's used to use waxed white silk thread in many of the old patterns. He may have some waxed thread available for purchase, be able to answer your questions in greater detail.

Good luck, and tell us about your results (good or bad) if you try it yourself.

T-12 & Ray,
A very interesting post! I like it! Remember, the Dettes tied without the use of a bobbin so stocking the waxed portion on an old (I presume?) reel makes sense. One could snip off just the right amount of waxed thread to complete a fly!
Interesting facts Ray on the color of waxes and how they affect silk threads! I find myself using wax (mostly Bill Shucks 7-7-2 formula) more and more during the construction of my Flymphs and Soft-Hackles! It would be interesting to know the "secret Dette wax formula" or even to own some!
Thanks again guys! Always food for thought on this forum!
Dougsden

Letumgo no I don't mind at all. I'm glad you did. Yes back in the day the Dettes and I presume Bergman used just enough silk in hand to complete a fly so the reel makes a lot of sense. I assume this would be a much harder process to go from a small spool back on to another small spool. I feel like you'd never get it wound evenly. I posed this question on fly tying with uncle cheech and asked if anyone had ever tried just dunking a whole spool. It's funny how people aren't familiar with old school tying techniques but talk to me like I'M the ignorant one. "Put the beer down, you know you can buy waxed thread right? Thread dosent need to be waxed, " bla bla bla....I've tried to contact Joe fox several times to talk about the matter and never got a response. I've even made it clear I'm not trying to get his secret recipe or anything. I make my own wax that I'm quite happy with and so are my customers. My tying routine is the same. Strip off 18" of thread and wax it then reel it back up. But it would be really nice to just treat the whole spool if it's something I know I'm going to wax heavily. Primrose silk for example. Oh well...I guess I'll just stick to the normal process. I just love to tinker and research the old way of doing things.