Covering for Paul - and more wax!

Covering for Paul - and more wax!

Viking Lars | Monday, 5 December 2016

Paul had to jump in a cover for me with short notice on Saturday, so I'm covering for Paul today. See, we very meticulously keep track of stuff like that here on Sexyloops. That's a necessity on a smooth running machine like 'Loops. Simple fact.

And while I'm on that subject, and before I move to the next, let me elaborate on running Sexyloops. Paul and I do our day-to-day communication on WhatsApp, which is very easy, since, let's face it, we always have our phones on us. So that's all good and well. What's not always good and well is trying yo keep track on which phone number Paul's on :-). This saturday I got a WhatsApp from Paul from a new number, and of course I just thought - og, Paul's new Malaysia phone number. So I saved that number to his contact details, where I had no less than 9 different numbers listed :-). And trust me - there's been many more over the years, and I always forget to list which number belongs in which country, so I don't know which ones to delete (and I keep thinking he might return to this and that number, which of course he never does).

For crying out loud, I've had the same number, across many different providers, for 15 years or something :-).

Well, I was really going to talk some more about wax (sorry). But this time's it's a different wax. There are basically two kinds of wax - flytying wax and dubbing wax. Flytying wax is used on the thread to give better grip on the materials, keep the thread from fraying, and even preserving natural silks. It also dramatically increases durability on thread-bodied flies like the NC-spiders.

Then there's dubbing wax the purpose of which is to make the thread sticky. This makes dubbing certain types of dubbings much easier, and some dubbings, like FlyRite, can be dubbed extremely tightly to make segmented bodies. It also makes touch dubbing much easier (touch dubbing is where you simply brush/touch dubbing across the thread to create a thn veil of haze of dubbing on the fly. An example is the Waterhen Bloa).

When it comes to dubbing waxes I've also had a bit of a fit and tried almost every brand on the market. The best? In my experience, Loon Low Tack Dubbing Wax - very good! The softer ones are too soft and leave lumps of wax on the thread and are actually less sticky than the "low tack ones".

I actually very, very rarely use dubbing wax. Which makes the following even crazier. Because there's one wax to rule them all - Overton's Wonderwax. I've had a tube for a long time, a gift from a friend (who obviously didn't know what he was giving away :-). But then I recently came across a shop selling a small batch, and I just couldn't help getting two more - even not knowing if they weere the real McCoy. I've received them and they certainly seem to be. With price, postage, customs and tax they ended up costing a small fortune, and with the rate I'm using it, I'll pass them both on to my kids (of someone else). But hey - when you find a fly tying material you really like - stock up!!! There's some advice for the coming week...

Have a good one!

Lars