Hackle Pliers

[Uncle Jesse]

While watching a video of one of the Park Fly Shop guys tying a fly his hackle pliers slipped twice and he commented one of these days someone is going to invent a hackle pliers that work. I will not pretend to be that guy but I have tried a little trick that seems to help. Now if one of you tell me "Oh, we have known that for years, we thought everyone knew that," I'm going to be ticked. I have used electrical test clips from Radio Shack for hackle pliers for several years. I always suspected the edge was cutting/breaking the stem of the hackle from time to time. This week I took a piece of the smallest shrink tubing, also from Radio Shack, heated it and then placed the shrunken tube onto the hook of the test clip. The results seems to hold as good or better and it does not seem to cut/break the hackle stem as often. I have only used it on a few soft hackle nymphs so testing has not been extensive. I also put shrink tubing on my regular hackle pliers also. No testing yet there. Maybe the photo will help explain what I did in case I did not communicate my meaning adequately.
Test clip opened.jpg

[Normand]

the heat shrink tubing trick has been used for many many years on regular style hackle pliers so i dont see why it wouldnt work on test clips

most of the hackle pliers shown in the link below have some sort of rubber sleeve/tubing on them

http://www.google.com/images?um=1&hl...ackle%20pliers

[Skip48]

Yes I have even been told if you loose or wear of the little rubber on the tips of rotating hackle pliers the shrink tubing will do a good job. I have trouble with all of them so far though, LOL! I have bought a ton of them and get mad at every one.

I am not sure though that you may be on to something, if the test clips have a stronger bite then it may hold better and now you have put something on it to take away the hard edge that can cut, maybe a really better thing. Let us know how it works after a bit of testing.

I am interested for sure.

However I looked better at the photo and they look a lot like the EZ Hackle pliers?

Skip

[Normand]

ez hackle plier vs test clip = exactly the same thing. simply a marketing ploy with a fancy name.

[Betty Hiner]

I've had the shrink wrap tubing on my hackle pliers for years! Had played with the radio shack test clip ... use them to hold flies for final inspection ... but thought the tip was too sharp to use on feathers. Wouldn't the shrink wrap tubing be bulky? How 'bout if the tip could be held open (plunger pushed in) then dipping it in plasti'coat?

[Uncle Jesse]

The smallest shrink tubing after shrinking is very small, it worked well with a soft hackle on a size 16 hook last night.

Gee, thanks for telling me to put shrink tubing on my other hackle pliers. All seriousness aside, it would be good to have a 100 best fly tying tips sticky message, like the one for rod building, with tips like put shrink tubing on your hackle pliers to keep them from slipping. Some of you guys teach me some pretty good stuff whether you mean to or not.