A recent post and some experiments led me to wonder what Madeira would look like over holographic thread. There's only one way to find out - do it! Did six test wraps over silver and three over gold with no cp and some thread in the finish mix to prevent fisheyes. Holographic thread is not the easiest thing to use and after doing six silver underwraps under lights my eyeballs were doing backflips and the three gold underwraps did not get packed properly which left a few lines in the finished product. The effects achieved were subtle but obviously there even over the dark purple colour I used. If this look is something you like I'd suggest you do some practice wrapping the holographic underwrap as it's not simple to get the stuff packed properly so you don't get any lines in the finised wrap. I found using a bit of negative angle on the thread and then packing as you wrap with a burnishing tool produced the best results for me. Posted a pic under "miscellaneous" or look under my name, there's not much there. It's probably been done before but I haven't seen it and the effects are interesting.

ESFNEM Col
Port Kembla, NSW
Australia

Instead of wrappin over holo thread, which is a MAJOR pain as you see, you can find lure tape or vinyl sheets which are adhesive backed and cut and tape/wrap them to the blank, an dwrap over that. Bill Ballou sent me some of this stuf a couple of years ago, it works well and is pretty easy, like installing a decal.

I did one with Purple Gudebrod in 2002: [www.rodbuilding.org] the lighter the color the better, even though it looks nice in the photo in real ylife it was hard ot see the effect under the purple

Thanks for the ideas Billy, I've got plenty of that lure tape so I might do another test and see how it turns out. You are correct with your assessment of Holo thread it is a major pain on anything but trim wraps. I've never done any more than one or two wraps for highlights and when I had to do a longer wrap under lights my eye balls went into total rebellion.

ESFNEM Col
Port Kembla, NSW
Australia

I did some similar testing looking for a good candy apple effect. I did silver, gold and holo mylar film as a base (from my fly tying kit). Silver looked best under all colors tested (blues, greens and orange). Holo was similar but the holo effect was largely lost. Gold looked OK but didn't have the brilliance of the silver. I bought a roll of 1/2" silver mylar film with thin adhesive on the back and it is working out well. Easy to work with and can be trimmed to size easily.

I bet it would look cool over the silver holographic decal medium Hmmmm!!!

Mike (Southgate, MI)
If I don't want to, I don't have to and nobody can make me (except my wife) cuz I'm RETIRED!!