Cutters and burners

[Mike-Connor]

What I find interesting is the lack of commercially available wing burners.

Mike, when using the burners for mayfly wings, what part of the feather do you use for the wing? Near the tip? In the web?

Which part of the feather you use depends a lot on the fly you are dressing and the effect you want. Genetic cock hackles are usually quite poor, as they have little or no web! This means the wings don't hold together very well. Various webby feathers like hen hackles, various soft hackles, and other bird body and wing feathers, ( Various coverts), tend to give quite good results. It all depends on what you want to achieve.

There are quite a few wing burners and cutters of various types on the market, but I have made my own burners from sheet brass, and I make cutters from used "throw away" razor blades. ( I still have a small hobby metal shop). This is not so easy for an amateur though, as the tempering etc. is not as easy as one might imagine!

http://fullwingburners.com/cart/inde...=index&cPath=8

http://www.bearlodgeangler.com/other_tools.htm

Instructions to make your own burners;

http://www.flyanglersonline.com/flyt...ps/part195.php

You need to play around with some scrap feathers to see the effects of placing the feathers in various ways. I only use a few patterns with such burned wings now, and I have some other methods of making wings which are also good, and rather less bother.

Some of the flies made with these tools look very nice indeed, but I don't think the fish really care much!

Over the years, I have collected, made, and used, a very large range of tools, and dressed a very large range of flies, but to be perfectly honest with you, after fifty years fly-dressing, half a century spent learning about these things, I could quite easily do without most of these tools, and also do fine with a very much restricted range of fly-patterns.

You have to weigh up the usefulness of such things, ( and of course the desire to "play" with them), against what you are trying to achieve. You don't actually need any of these things to dress effective flies.

One reason for my learning about all these tools was that people in my fly-dressing classes wanted to know about them, so I had no choice in the matter!

Lots of people still ask about these things, and I will quite happily answer them if I can, but I usually carefully refrain from making any comment on how useful some of these things really are. If people want to use these things, that's fine. I don't bother using many tools at all any more when dressing my own flies, and I often simply sit and dress flies in my hands, just with a pair of scissors palmed. I don't really need anything else at all for most of my flies. Some tools are of course extremely useful for various things. Again, how you do things and what you use all depends on what you want to achieve.

I certainly don't want to discourage anybody from using tools!

EDIT: It is only fair to point out that I don't dress flies below a size 16 in my fingers ( and very rarely anywhere else either!). If you want to dress flies size 18 and below, you really need a vice to do it.

TL
MC