What wax do you use, I have the veniards which I think is hard and takes a bit of softening up. I also have a block of bees wax which is very smooth and I think its good.
I see on YouTube some guys use black cobblers wax.
So will any wax do, has it got to be a particular sort of wax ?
Must admit I haven't used wax for many, many years. I used it when I first started fly tying but it used to annoy me when I had completed a fly and did the whip finish that there would be a little globule of wax partially blocking the hook eye. This came from the tying thread being drawn through four or five turns of the whip finish and picking up the wax along the way.
I used the pre-waxed stuff for some time, but now use Uni Thread, UTC, Sheer, Veevus, or Semperfli in various thicknesses down to 14/0. No wax,
Back in the 80’s I bought a tube of Overtin’s Wonder Wax and, after a bit, put it away in a box and promptly forgot about it. The flies I was tying and the materials I was using didn’t call for wax, or so I thought.
Fast forward a few decades and I became interested in patterns and techniques from your side of The Pond; I started watching Davey McPhail (and others) videos and realized how useful wax was to manage a lot materials that tend to have minds of their own - bronze mallard comes to mind. I dug out that tube and immediately saw a difference; previously hard to manage stuff, like the mallard, hen pheasant wings, duck quill slips, etc. went on and stayed where they were supposed to (it also helped that I got better at managing thread torque and tension over the intervening years).
As it turns out, I was unwittingly prescient in my purchase of wax - nowadays, here in the States, it’s viewed as the Holy Grail of wax. They stopped making it years ago but, apparently, the demand was so great, they started manufacturing it again, at $15.00 (US) a tube; I think I payed $2. As frugal as I am, I’d probably pay the price if I had to; the stuff works better than anything else I’ve tried and has become an important part of my tying kit.
I use some yellowish hard stuff which is decades old. And some black cobbler's wax which I bought at the 2003 BFFI. The cobbler's wax softens quickly if left in a patch of sunlight. Of the two the cobbler's is easier to use.
i know its recommended to use dark cobblers wax for tying gwg,but not so sure about spiders ,anyway i use verniards dubbing wax( tacky )i just run the silk through it just before tying on to the hooks,it darkens the shade quite effectivelyand i find it substancial,
a light woodcock
orange silk you can see where the colour changed with the wax i use d
I always liked beeswax, especially the smell, I had several big blocks of it but I donated most to a Black Powder Club, they used it to lubricate Minie bullets. I used it applied to cylinder studs and biscuit oven plate studs (while hot) it loosened them a treat. Rosin sticks were also useful.
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