Fly-Fishing and Fly-Making, for Trout, Bass, Salmon, Etc. with Plates of the Actual Material for Making Flies of Forty-Eight Varieties (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1898 Excerpt: ...this is'uncalled for. We now append a few useful recipes for natural dyes: Fiery Brown.--Camwood, logwood or partridgewood chips in equal parts, boiled in pure water. Olive.--Fustic and camwood or logwood in equal parts, with a very small portion of copperas added when at thepoint of boiling; the last named determines the shade. The outside of large onions boiled, also, are good. Green.--An infusion of fustic chips, to which must be added oil of vitriol, in a quantity sufficient to gain the shade required. Light Yellow.--Barberry bark in solution. Dun.--Logwood and copperas. Brown.--Fustic chips, two-thirds; logwood, one-third; boil in rain water.--Black.--One-half pound logwood chips, boil in half a pint of water; this done, put in one ounce copperas and stir up." Gut may be stained by weak solutions of the Diamond dyes, and by any of the above. Among the list of materials, wax and varnish must not be omitted. Cobblers' wax was for a long time used as the best; but a colorless wax made as follows is, in my opinion, the best, and takes the varnish better than any others I have used: White Wax.--Pour ounces best white resin, one-half ounce fresh lard, one-quarter ounce white wax. Melt the resin first; then add the wax and then the lard; let it simmer for a quarter of an hour; then pour into a basin of cold water and pull it like taffy. The longer you pull it the whiter it becomes. Vaknish.--Brown scale shellac dissolved in alcohol is a good varnish for flies with dark heads. Bleached shellac is better, however, producing, as it does, an almost colorless varnish. The best of all is a varnish I call the crystal varnish, made as follows: Take a quantity of the best gum copal and pick out the lightest colored and clearest nodules. Now, test them for their f...