tried to do a tiger wrap tonight, I was having problems with the tension on said three threads. i have an amerrican tackle power wrapper, with a two spool, but I tried to wrap on a modified mudhole hand wrapper setup what is the best way to do a tiger wrap. I could not keep tension on my threads any help in this as i would love to get this wrap done. any Ideas on tor plans that would work for a therea carrier. with tensioner that I could buiild or you would be eilling to sell.

use a large PHONE BOOK , one book will do it all 3 threads , don't need 3 books ,

William Sidney
AK

A phone book with weight on top for tension and have the three threads in 3 coffee mugs with the thread run thru the handle. Have the handles all pointed towards each other to get them as close together as possible. If you can't get the threads tight enough together to stay together, run the threads thru a loose small guide between the mugs and phone book.

Have the threads run down the center of the page for better tension control.

I use a couple of old text books on top of each other run the treads through the bottom book a different page for each tread. I do not use mugs just put the spools behind the books. If you need more tension add more weight on top. Been doing this for years works great.

Thanks I will try that.

In my opinion, three thread tigers don't look as good as two thread ones. It's a case of less is more. With three, the bottom layer gets muddled looking.

just starting with tiger wrap, what colors work best? I want to accent my rod with a red tiger wrap have a black graphite colored rod blank. should I have a base laver of thread? also do you sacrafice one thread on top and if so what color? thanks again for everyones help.

You need two threads as a bottom layer. The colour of the lighter bottom thread provides the background of the finished tiger.
IE black and gold with red over will create a red tiger over a gold background.

The bottom threads MUST BE OF HIGH CONTRAST, black and white, black and silver etc.
Wrap these a little loosely, you are going to use your thumbs to push these threads a little to the left and right, to create an "S" contour before applying finish to them.
You only need a slight "S", so don't go nuts...Pushing the threads out of alignment enhances the tiger effect.
Once this base wrap is pushed, finished and dried, you will wrap your red thread and a thread of any colour you have lots of over the top of the base wrap.
IF THE BASE LAYER WAS WRAPPED LEFT TO RIGHT, THE TOP LAYER WILL BE WRAPPED RIGHT TO LEFT.
WRAP THE TOP LAYER AT NORMAL TENSION. Tie off, then heat the whole wrap with a hair dryer.
Don't set it on fire, just warm it up nicely so that the top threads want to stick to the bottom wrap.
Let things cool, then carefully unwind the off colour thread from the top wrap. You want to leave a cork-screw of thread to give a Venetian blind effect...
You will see your tiger emerge as the sacrificial thread comes off.
Add the clear finish and dry.
The Tiger will always be whatever colour your top thread is.
I use NCP (no colour preserver) thread for the Tiger colour thread because I think CP causes problems when I remove the sacrificial thread.
You are free to do whatever you like.
Good luck
Garry2rs