The idea for the copper body on this streamer came from watching a woodworking video on YouTube.
The idea for this one came from watching a woodworking video on YouTube. The presenter was building an extraction system to move sawdust from his workshop equipment to a cyclone vacuum collector. He was using plastic drainage pipes and stuck copper tape along the tubes to dissipate static electricity that can build up in the plastic through contact with fast flowing sawdust. Apparently, the static can give you a quite a zap if you touch the pipes or may generate sparks which are not a good thing around sawdust.
I didn’t know that thin self-adhesive copper tape was a thing, so I had a look online. It turns out that it’s available in a range of widths and I bought a 30m roll of 3mm tape costing less than 2p a metre, which is pretty cheap as fly tying materials go. The 0.05mm thick tape has a peel off paper backing making it easy to build up a shiny body for a streamer, either on its own, or wrapped over another material like lead wire or foil to add further weight or to give a thicker body.
Being very thin the copper tape tends to crumple as it is wound, which is not a bad thing, in fact I think it gives a better imitation of fish scales than a perfectly smooth tinsel body. The facets formed in a copper tape body once it has been wrapped with monofilament thread and varnished catch the light individually at different angles, which is what you see as minnows and other small fish twist and turn in sunlight.
- Log in to post comments
