Pearsalls #4

[otter]

Last year I managed to buy #4 pearsalls direct from them - checking their site recently they have very few gossamer shades for direct sale.

I have no idea where the #4 sits in historical terms or what the correct shade of any of them is historcially - I don't necessarily hold with there being a correct shade as such other than a particular shade/colour may work better on your river and a different one on another.

Having only seriously got into tying spiders last year I fell in love with using pearsalls and started using #3,#4,#5 as thread only bodies on my olive dries.
#4 body , Coq de Leon tail, CDC compadun pointing slightly over eye was a tremendous success and I mean tremendous, all thru april and may and early june.

Anyone know whether #4 is available anywhere as I wanna stock up on it.

A few experiments are underway for this season.

1. Utilitising pearsalls silk for touch dubbing. Take a lenght of pearsalls and run it thru velcroe a dozen or so times and attached to the velcroe will be some fantastic ultra fine dubbing. Fiddly, but the resultant dubbing is excellent and easily mixed by hand to give some very subtle shades.

2. Using 2 of #3,#4,#5 as bodies on dries, body tied similar to purple and orange of dark watchett.

3. Ribbing say a body of #3 with a well waxed length of #4.

Old story, falling in love with a particular material and experimenting

[wingman]

I also find pearsall's excellent to use, it has a certain quality about it and is so easy to apply to the hook. i don't know about no.4, you could try Phil at Fly tying boutique, if he hasn't got any he might be able to tell you where you might get it.

[tonyt]

HI Otter
I purchased some from Wharfedale Angling Classics last Nov. I cant remember if I got a #4 or not but I do know that it has increased in price an awful lot £2.99 a spool where as a few months previous it was just £1.80.

Does anyone know why this is, have they stopped production?

BTW nice tip for the silk dubbing, I'll give that a go.

Tony

[WelshOsprey]

Might be wrong but I'm sure someone told me Pearsalls were now based in cardiff?

[Cumbrian]

Originally Posted by otter

Anyone know whether #4 is available anywhere as I wanna stock up on it.

Phil at The Flytying Boutique stocks this shade.

Looked at Langley Threads and Pearsalls Embroidery (John and Carol in Cardiff) website today Pearsalls Embroidery and they are listing very few gossamer silks (as stated above). Not sure why, they had a whole host of shades at the BFFI in 2009.

[ickypimp]

Try flytying boutique

[noeyedeer]

Originally Posted by Cumbrian

they are listing very few gossamer silks

We're probably not buying enough!

An economic dye batch (unless they are producing by hand or in a small sample machine) would be thousands of meters. (or yards in old money).

[strikealight]

Yes, Pearsalls was bought up a couple of years ago by Langley Threads of Cardiff (see Pearsalls Embroidery). They were at BFFI 2010 and had pretty much everything for sale, even the scarce 6b.

Another trick I use is to wind a yellow Pearsall's body down the hook shank and then apply cobbler's wax to the thread a use it to rib back up to the hackle - looks really good.

[spidersplus]

Ahh - that's not quite accurate ...

John & Carol of Langley Threads were approached by Pearsall's a number of years ago to dye the raw silk to the correct shades, then send the batch of silk back to Pearsall's for them to then spool up and sell.

Pearsall's have been so busy over the past few years producing silk for the military medic division that Langley Threads have continued to dye silk and then spool it.

John has over the past 2 years been examining the old discontinued shades (such as No. 4) by spectrograph (not sure about the spelling!) to reproduce a good likeness. I have supplied samples of lots of the original silks and he has now supplied me with the original No. 6a, Smoke (No. 10), Blue (No. 7) and the snuff coloured 6B.

By the way - the price hike over the past few years is purely down to the rocketing cost of the raw material. Raw silk has increased in price at least four fold in the last 2 years.

Kind regards


Kind regards

[dabhoy]

Maybe you should all make your own only about £30000 per tonne for the raw silk for starters