![]() Now we’re getting somewhere, but it’s a long way from perfect. It’s pretty simple math to figure out that 140 denier thread is twice as heavy as 70 denier thread, 210 is three times as heavy and so on. UTC debuted with thread in 70, 140, 210 and 280 deniers, and simplified thread sizing to a significant degree. It says nothing of the thread’s configuration, material or strength, only the weight, but it does shed some light on the inadequacies of the aught system. It’s a physical weight for a length of thread. Denier is the weight, in grams, of 9000 meters of thread. As it turns out, neither of those statements are entirely true and I’ll get into all that in a few minutes.Įnter Wapsi Fly Company and their introduction of UTC thread, sized using the thread industry’s standard of measurement, denier, rather than the historic, and now known to be somewhat useless aught system. Given the system of measurement already in place, the hapless tyer was led to believe that the new 8/0 thread was smaller than the old standard of Danville’s 6/0, and the newly introduced UNI 6/0 thread was much, much stronger than the corresponding Danville thread. UNI came out with what they called 8/0 thread and that really sort of screwed everything up from there. In the early 1990’s UNI thread came into the market and while sticking with the aught system of sizing, used a somewhat different baseline for their thread, and that’s where everything went to hell. It was only when other thread companies came into play that the tying world became a lot messier. The first major fly tying thread on the scene (Danville) used this system for about fifty years without issue. Many tying threads are still measured this way today, as an example, 000000 or 6/0 (six-aught) being smaller than 000 or 3/0 (three-aught) thread. In the case of surgical silk, the aught number referred to a diameter range and worked nicely as silk is a hard, round filament that can dependably be measured in finite terms. Using a zero as a baseline and adding zeros to denote smaller sizes, this system has been around since the late 1930’s and was for a long time the way all tying thread was measured. Historically, fly tying thread was sized using the aught/ought system that came originally from sizing surgical silk using a range of diameters, and that is still used today for that purpose. Waxed thread is not meant to be a substitute for dubbing wax, but rather, it is applied to the thread in the manufacturing process to keep the thread from fraying and unwinding wildly when it breaks. Almost all conventional thread comes from the factory pre-waxed these days and if you wanted un-waxed thread you’d have to use silk, Kevlar, GSP or special order some of the older Danville threads like size A Monocord. I’m in no way saying you need a thousand spools of thread on your bench, but hopefully what follows will help to clear up the details of why threads are different and what those differences mean to the tyer.īefore I get started, let me say just a few words about wax on tying thread. This selection lets me choose the right tool for the job in every instance. At the moment, I am certain I own no less than one thousand spools of thread in a huge range of sizes, colors and configurations and while every last one of them is good for something, none of them are good for everything. In my mind, thread is a tool chosen and used to perform a specific task. Note that I used the word “tool” rather than material when describing thread here. With that in mind, I will now give my best shot at explaining some of the finer details of this most misunderstood tool. I have had the idea for this article in my head for quite some time and am often specifically asked to explain tying threads in my demos. Not only is there just not much out there to clear up the understanding of this vital piece of every fly we tie, much of what is there is just plain wrong and misleading. Except for the apparent step child of fly tying tools thread. Between books, magazines and the internet, there is no shortage of adequate instruction and advice on almost all aspects of fly tying. There is a lot of good information about fly tying out in the world these days.
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