Who do you think

[gingerdun]

I have nothing new to add here, sorry to say. Jim never claimed to have invented any technique, although we might be able to credit him with the notched card for storing spun bodies. While Halford's technique was for hair hackles, it is not a very big leap to dubbed fur bodies.
What Leisenring did was to make the spun body the foundation of his tying technique for making translucent flies. He elevated its importance in a way that never had been seen before. His two main proteges, Dick Clark and Pete Hidy, adopted the spun body as a foundation technique too. But I hope one day we will find out more about its origins.

Lance

[narcodog]

You know it;s a funny thing. When I started to tye flymphs, I didn't have a block and could not get the results I wanted when rolling the material on my knee. What I did was similar to Halford's method. I would double my silk and loop it over my hackle gauge that's attached to the stem. I'd spin it up and then tie it in.

[redietz]

I've got to believe that there was a lot of parallel development here. If one person thought of it, chances are, somebody else thought of it. The dubbing loop and split thread techniques are pretty much the same thing, just done in situ.

[Roadkill]

Some of my best ideas were stolen from me by tyers well over a century ago!

[Mataura mayfly]

Some of my best ideas were stolen from me by tyers well over a century ago!

And even though I am in no way qualified (when does that ever stop me? ) to comment on this debate........

I feel Mr Roadkill has touched on something.
I feel often a lot of the tricks of the trade one reads in print have often been borrowed from others that were not lucky enough to publish their methods or discoveries. Could it be that this method was some ancient method practised by some isolated tier/tiers that was passed down verbally and by demonstration long before either of the above mentioned learned of the method. They then put it to print and it has become attributed to their names?

Just a thought, from someone that knows little..............

[letumgo]

Good one Bill (Roadkill)!

[Old Hat]

Bill , I knew you were a little gray on the head and facial area but well over a century and still tying like you do. You go man!

[Soft-hackle]

Okay, from what I am reading and saw in Trout, Bergman's method is simply rolling the thread on the knee over the fur. To me it is touch dubbing, albeit, off the fly. If you read the description, you will find he also suggests twisting the dubbing on the waxed thread. This is a far cry from twisting the dubbing between a folded over piece of silk-two pieces of silk. Cross' method is actually closer to Leisenring, and I would not be surprised if he picked up the idea from Jim, creating a dubbing brush, much like those done on dubbing block, using his own method. Not knowing how long Leisenring and Cross knew each other it's difficult to say. Has anyone checked Skues' dubbing method?

Mark

[wsbailey]

Halford learned a great deal from Marryat but Marryat didn't want any credit: http://www.flyfishinghistory.com/marryat.htm Bill

[gingerdun]

Cross' method is actually closer to Leisenring, and I would not be surprised if he picked up the idea from Jim, creating a dubbing brush, much like those done on dubbing block, using his own method. Not knowing how long Leisenring and Cross knew each other it's difficult to say. Has anyone checked Skues' dubbing method?
Mark

I would dearly love to know when Rube Cross met Pete and Jim. No way to know. But Rube's book came out in 1936. The earliest evidence I have of Leisenring mentioning Rube's name is in a letter to Pete dated July 1940 when they were deep into working on ATWF. Nothing in the correspondence suggests that Rube and Jim had any connection other than through their mutual friend Pete.

My guess is that the spun body was part of the culture of fly-tying that gradually made its way into print via Cross and Leisenring. Both those guys read the sportsman's magazines that included fly-tying columns. I wouldn't be surprised if there had been something about spun dubbing loops in one of them.

BTW, I don't own any of Cross's books, since my mother sold Dad's copies. I haven't read Cross's account of the spun body. I better look into it.

Lance