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).]