Anyone had any success doing a dark colored tartan pattern...want to do a "black watch " tartan composed of Dark bues Green black with white and yellow trim. Most of the tartans I have seen are composed of a white backround with colors added then filled with white and trim added...allowing for the under color to beeld thru the white. This looks great but the tartan I am trying to reproduce has only a couple white accent trim lines.

Only one way to find out....get wrapping

Not true of all things Billy..........as men we can learn from others failures and sucesses. If it were true there would be no use for this forum.

I am a believer in getting in there and doing it......but I don't like cutting wraps off. LOL



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/28/2006 09:51AM by Joe Brenner.

Cutting wraps off is one of the things you have to deal with if you want to get the perfect result you are looking for.

BIlly,

I agree with that but want to limit the number of wraps I have to cut off.

I am not trying to reinvent the wheel.......Scottish clans have been using black watch tartans for over a 1000 yrs....but I haven't seen one reproduced on a rod. My thinking is someone has tried and failed...wondering if all the dark colors just get darker and you can't really see the detail of the tartan...wondering if I under wrap w white NCP then use my darker colors then wrap over will it show thru or will everything just get dark? Is there something I haven't thought of?

Yes I could just try it....but I have a very limited amount of time to work on rods in the first place. My goal is to learn from others to save me wasting the time I do have .

By the way Billy......I admire your work..very nice stuff.

Could you wrap a short section with teh colors you want on top of each other to give yourself an idea? Every Tartan I've seen has been light colors. I think people are copycatters, and do what they see others do. I do it myself. Break out of the box.

I'll go on to further assume/guess that there are VERY few people who do Tartans, and even fewer who post on the interent. SO the liklehood tht you'll recieve a response on your question is probably slim.

PS - thanks. I have often cut wraps off, I've got about 8 or 9 which I CP'd & epoxied this way I at least had somethign to show for my wasted time.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/28/2006 11:07AM by Billy Vivona.

I've got a couple old pcs of blank lying around...guess I will need to do some test wraps...If no one else replies.

Thanks Billy

Let us know how it goes Joe (with pics preferably) as I'm looking at doing a dark coloured tartan (for an Irish clan tartan - my last name).

Just thought I would add my thoughts on this one. I have tried a tartan in the Black Watch style and I wasn't impressed with it at all. The whole set up was too dark to really have any of the colours stand out except the NCP trim. I used dark green, black and dark blue in mine and used a light green base colour. When the finish was added it just looked too dark to pick up any highlights. The best colours I have personally used for tartans are green and red, blue and green, light brown/dark brown and any colour with bands of black. For me, the background colour has to be white or a very light shade of one of the colours you are using, eg light blue, tan, spring green etc. Another way to get a different look is to run bands of one colour up the rodand bands of another colour down the rod, eg dark blue and black, green and black or darker green etc. As Billy says, you never really know until you give it a try. Some are outstanding, some are ready for the razor blade.

Mark,

Thanks for the info..this is kind of what I feared would happen. When I get some time I am going to play with it and see what I can come up with...

Michael,

My Mother's side of the family (MacNeil of barra) though Scottish also come from Irish decendants.