What say you Dr. Fish!
I've seen in many a post a question, That once and for all, I'd like a solid answer to... From someone who is in the hook making game. For those who may not know..Dr.Fish works for Mustad!
The Question is simply.
Why is the cost of Barbless hooks greater than Barbed?
Indeed this may have answered before..I just may have missed it...
Wish ya great fishing,Bill
Bill;
Can I ride along on your post? Having spent 40 years in manufacturing I can make some guesses.
Lower volume? Set up change? Different wire?
Interesting!!
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Don't forget the Michigan Fish-In August 14th to the 20th. The Holy Water's of the Au Sable await you!!
Cactus
Sure can Jack!
It just has been raised so many times and It is something that has just always bothered me when milling through those catalogs!!! and I see the prices...I'd fish actual barbless hooks but for the prices of them....
Wish ya great fishing,Bill
Seems like ALL of the above could apply. Plus, logically, if the necessity of the barb is true, then that portion of wire must be eliminated from a barbless hook, thus a certain amount of "pure waste" wire that the consumer, obviously, has to pick-up price-wise.
I don't seem to mind paying for
"barbless", but MTBE in Ca gas is another story....gouge us to put it in, THEN gouge us again to take it out!!! Balderdash to anyone who expects me to believe THAT is necessary.
....lee s.
Fishing the Great Beyond
I have heard that "hedgehog" is the answer.
I'll give it a try. They use differnt jig set ups and it is harder to make barblees then barbed hooks as the jig for making barbed hooks has the barb as a catch point in the jig as were the barbless has a jig that has to be setup differnt to hold the point of the hook vs/barbed hooks. Hope this sheds some lite on it as this is what I sort of remember beeing told in a post a yr. or so ago. You just have to search the arcives to find it/them. Later Matt P.S. no relation to Dr. Fish as I know of as my last name is Pierce also.
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To each there own !
Fishing the Great Beyond
After making they are coated; Japaned, or bronzed. This is done in a bowl. The barbless ones hook themselves together as there is no barb to keep the points from going into the eyes. They become a 'Hedgehog'. Takes hours to seperate them and makes people very cranky so they charge more for them.
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"How long does it take to learn fly-fishing?
No one knows."
Grand poo-bah
Ah yes, the barbless discussion rises to the surface again : )
Hello Bill
Allow me to answer your question for you. Yes, Barbless hooks are indeed more expensive than barbed hooks and with good reason and no, they are not simply more because we want to charge more for them.
1) In the hook making process, the barb is the first thing that is formed on a hook. Every single step after that, the machines use the barb as an anchor point for the wire and grip the wire there as the rest of the process continues to completion.
So, when you remove the barb, the machine now has no specific spot to grab onto the wire. This means that the wire must be gripped another way which requires different tooling. This other tooling does grip and hold the wire but not nearly as well as the standard tooling and the barb. So, quality control can and is an issue as the wire can move ever so slightly causing a deformed hook that will be rejected later on in the process. Obviously if you have to toss out a higher percentage of hooks in the manufacturing process, your cost of production goes up.
2) The fact remains that barbed hooks are simply much, much more popular than barbless hooks. So, when the production on say a barbed size 16 Dry Fly hook is run, the machines might run 400,000 hooks. Now for easy math?s sake, let?s hypothetically say that fixed productions costs (tool setting, materials, labor, etc.) run $1000. This comes out to $0.0025 per hook in production costs. Now if you have a barbless size 16 dry fly hook and sales dictate that only 30,000 hooks are needed AND the production costs are now $2,500 you now have cost of $0.0833 per hook. Now, 8.3 cents per hook is a whole lot more expensive than 2.5 tenths of one cent per hook, over 30 times more expensive in fact (in this example). While these figures are simply meant as an example, you get the idea. Then however you have to factor in a few additional costs . . .
- - Higher reject rate which makes your cost per unit price go up more.
- - Lower demand means longer time on the shelves which means lower turns (dollars tied up in inventory longer) adding to the higher cost per unit.
- - As JC pointed out, barbless hooks create a major tangling issue which greatly slows down the rest of the process (coating, tempering, packaging) so again, you are adding more to the cost per unit price.
So there you have it in a nutshell. Hopefully this answers your questions but if you still have some ask away : )
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Jeff - AKA Dr. Fish
If it has fins and swims than I must chase it!
[This message has been edited by Dr. Fish (edited 15 May 2006).]
Fishing the Great Beyond
LF,,, Grab just this reply by Jeff and put it on FAOL,,, somewhere please!
Thank you Jeff (Dr. Fish!!!) You are da man!!!!!!!!!!
And JC & LF... You are welcome!!...Yes I agree whole heartedly of posting this in a tighty lil spot for future referance!!!....Finially...THE Answers I for one NEEDED to know!
[This message has been edited by billknepp (edited 15 May 2006).]
Wish ya great fishing,Bill
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