HDM Tiger Wrap

Two years ago I taught a class at the North Central Regional in Park Falls, Wisconsin. That is when I first introduced the Mylar wrap, I then did a presentation on it at the Dallas Fort Worth Regional. A good friend of mine Gary (Paul) Palmejar took it and ran with it. This year at the DFW Regional he taught a class on it about how he has been using it. He does some awesome things with it. I will explain how I do it, not as good as Gray, but you will get the ideal so that you can run with it also.

The first step is to do the basic bottom wrap of the "Scott Throop Tiger Wrap". Once you have the contrasted colors, I only use black and white. I do not feel I need any other colors as the Mylar gives me all the colors that I will need. I burnish it just like you do the regular "STTW", once I have burnished it I put tape on the blank to keep the glue off the blank and the rod wrapper. I use color perserver for two reasons the first being to keep the colors from fading, but the most important is to keep from cutting the thread when you cut the mylar.

I then spray it with adhesive spray.

I cut a piece of Mylar the length of the wrap with enough to go around the rod a couple of times.

I start out on one side and rub it down as I go around the blank keeping the air pockets' out.Continue around the rod and overlap so when you cut you have a complete coverage of the rod.

I then use a straight edge, I like the engineers scale as it is easy for me to hold and keep a straight edge.

Once the mylar is in place it is time to do the top wrap. I am using purple as my top wrap on this one.

I start the top wrap with a sacrifice thread in the opposite direction from the bottom layer. putting a pullout for the sacrifice thread.

Burnish it in the opposite direction from the bottom wrap.

Remove the sacrifice thread with the pullout that you put in at the start of the wrap.

Removing the sacrifice thread and watching the colors start to pop out.

Wrap completed but without epoxy, it shows the colors even more when the epoxy is applied.

The material that I use is purchased at Hobby Lobby and is made by Prism Crafts and labeled "Clear Iridescent Wrap" the cost for a 50 square foot roll is only $3.99 and this would be enough to do thousands of rods. The spray adhesive that I use is Loctite, any craft spray adhesive will work this just happens to be the one I use. A different color for the top thread will pull different colors from the mylar. You can also purchase a mylar that comes in sheets it works great also it just isn't as bright.

Hope to see many variations of this and would like to thank Scott Throop for giving us this wrap to play with. One thing that I am also doing with this is putting it over the Dragon Scale that Jim Trelikes gave us. To do this you do the basic dragon scale bottom wrap and then place the mylar over it same way as explained in this article. The top wrap is them done with a sacrifice thread. Colors are really popping when you do this. I cannot get the colors to really show up with a camera but it really has many colors.