Friendship Flies

You can click on the pics to see enlarged versions.

I'm a lucky guy - I have very generous friends some of whom are also very good fly tyers.  Lots of the flies I've been given were handed to me on-stream.  I bring them home where they line up nicely on a shelf down here in the cave.

My friend John Miniaci up in Montreal gave me a bunch of those, and Stephen Nye up in New Brunswick sent me that huge joke bug on the end.  He knows how fond I am of deer hair bugs (not.)

I have also been given a number of classic Atlantic salmon flies that have been begging to be framed.  With nothing but time on my hands these days (I should be in New Brunswick building our camp...but that pesky border is closed due to the virus), I decided it was time to get framing.

I usually cut the mats for shadow box frames first and then let the fly or flies and mats dictate the frame style.  Awhile ago, Paul Rossman gave me a huge and takes-two-strong-people-to-carry oval mat cutter.  The base of the monster is something like 3 feet by four feet:

Once I got cutting ovals figured out, I started matching mat colors and flies.  I have a set of Rangers given to me by Stephen Nye, and I initially thought I'd frame them individually:

But I have more than a couple flies to frame individually, and thought that maybe I would frame these in a group in one frame instead.  I bought a large format printer that can print on heavy card stock; I like to use 140 pound textured watercolor paper for fly backgrounds.  That printer (Epson Workforce WF-7710) allows me to print right on the paper, negating the need for added-in labels.

First I mess around with mat colors:

I settled on white and a blue that picked up a color in the flies:

My pal Brian Cuming always visits us in salmon camp bearing gifts, be it music cd's, great wine, or beautiful flies.   I decided to frame three of his together as well, going with with and a dark brown, again to pick up a color or two in his flies:

Back to that oval cutter and some individual flies from friends and again trying to find mat colors that compliment the flies.  From Stephen:

From Royce Stearns:

Another from Stephen:

And from my young friend, Julian Furlaga:

After all that matting, I decided that "simple" would be best for frames, and I wanted them all to be the same so that they made lovely groupings.  I had a piece of 1"X 6" red oak laying around, so I milled it up to make the essence of simplicity frames.  And fortunately, had a nice day to spray the frames outside:

BTW, in my experience, this is the best clear satin finish I've ever used on stained or natural wood (shameless plug...it's how I got the manufacturer to sell cans to me wholesale!).

I think our camp, if the U.S and Canada ever let me cross the border again, will really look swell with these additions to the walls:

One more frame:  A gentleman that has been fishing my salmon flies for a few years is quarantined down in South Carolina.  He sent me a note a week or so ago, saying that he'd like a framing of some of my flies to enjoy and bring thoughts of salmon fishing past and future to him.  That was a happy project....this time I stained the oak.

That's it on the framing front....now back to a few more streamers and a very messy kitchen table (Bridget let me bring some stuff up from the cave while I recovered from a new hip.  That was in February.  So far she's let me stay!

Cheers!
Gary