Walton’s Twisting Engine (a labor of love!)
This falls in the “this eclecticguy is crazy” department! Or, maybe not! I’ve been furling fly fishing leaders for a number of years and have known about these twisting engines. Darrel Martin has photos of a reproduction engine and a woodcut of an old engine in his book “The Fly-Fisher’s Craft: The Art and History“. I did a little research and called Darrel to ask about his engine before designing this one. The trickiest part is the gearing. There are 3 smaller gears around a central gear that is attached to the crank shaft. This engine furls 3 strands of horsehair, gut or line. On mine, these are in a 1-3 ratio; each crank of the handle rotates the smaller gears/hooks 3 times.
These engines were used to make horsehair fly lines. Modern Atlantic Salmon fly tyers like to use them for twisting silkworm gut to snell their flies.
Here are some construction photos:
It starts out a lot like a reel; brass plates cut in to squares, octagons and finally round:
With a lot of gears:
These are small, at 2 1/4″ diameter:
The hooks were actually fairly difficult to reproduce because they are tapered and the tapered section is bent. It is tricky enough making nice bends on straight sided brass rod!
And here is the finished twisting engine, polished and ready to ship. You can see my new logo and maker’s stamps.
The woodcuts I’ve seen show the gears enclosed but I decided to keep mine exposed. It is fascinating watching all of that motion when the engine is in operation! Plus, lubricating the mechanism is much easier. This twisting engine is going to my friend Paul at Historic Angling Enterprises. Apparently, he uses his engine every day to make horsehair snoods. He has worn out several “inferior” engines. I hope mine is over-engineered enough for him!
CM_Stewart said:
Jul 27, 09 at 6:32 amBeautiful.
You might also post this comment here: http://furledleaders.proboards.com/index.cgi?
It seems many people on that board use plastic hair braiders, which do not last very long; and nearly all make two leg leaders, which are neither as round nor as nice as three leg leaders. (Any you can probably count on one thumb the number who make horse hair leaders.) In all honesty, most furlers will view a Walton’s engine as a curiosity, but there will be a few who have wanted one for years.
EclecticGuy said:
Jul 27, 09 at 8:22 amThanks Chris, I’ll check it out.
richard kell said:
Jul 28, 09 at 5:09 amExcellent stuff, thankyou for directng me here. I recognise these devices as used in making rope, my slant is seeing them in UK ‘Model Engineer’ magazine from the 1950′s …. also the big book on modelling the wooden ship ‘Victory’ by Dr Nepean Longridge has text and diagrams of such ie making miniature rope of various sizes.
richard kell said:
Jul 28, 09 at 5:12 amsorry .. its http://www.richradkel.co.uk…..three w’s ….my kybord on leaving these comments has become very ‘sticky’ losing characaters typed ….
EclecticGuy said:
Jul 28, 09 at 8:18 amThanks Richard. These are basically miniature rope makers. They are used for making horse hair fishing lines, silkworm gut snells, and furled leaders.
cheers,
EG
richard westerfield said:
Sep 07, 09 at 2:42 pmwhere did you buy the gears and what size arw they ?
thank you
richard westerfield
EclecticGuy said:
Sep 07, 09 at 3:02 pmHey Richard. I make my own gears but on my first engine I used gears from SmallParts.com. The center gear has 36 teeth, the 3 outer gears are 12 teeth. These are 32 pitch, 20 degree gears.
EG