This past week I spent at the ISE Show in San Mateo, Calif. where Roy Powell (from Danville, Calif.) demonstrated fly tying in my booth for a couple days. He showed me his method of bending/shaping rubber legs that I though was really innovative as I’ve alway bent them by tying an over-hand knot. Sometimes positioning the knotted leg was a real pain in the … (you pick the body part!).
Following is Roy’s method:
Place a small drop of super glue on the tip of a bodkin then apply it to the rubber leg material on the opposite side you want the bend. Let the super glue set for about 15 seconds. Slowly stretch the rubber leg material then slowly allow it to relax. The leg is bent! A gentle stretch forms a 45 degree angle and a more agressive stretch forms a 90 degree bend.
Take care & tight lines - Al Beatty [url=http://www.btsflyfishing.com:2fe73]www.btsflyfishing.com[/url:2fe73]
Another method is demonstrated by Oliver Edwards in one of his videos. Position the nymph in the direction you want the joint to drop due to gravity pull. Come close to the outer side, but do not touch the rubber strand direct, with the hot tip of a cauteriser tool. Instant ‘elbow’.
Here’s an example of fun with the superglue/rubberleg trick:
I tied this one 2 seasons ago and have noticed that the superglue does lead to a faster degrading of the rubber leg material - still, it’s keen and worth it! Tight lines, Alec
In a class given by Oliver Edwards, he recommended that when you use this technique for “bending” legs, you use one “worn out” battery along with a full (or almost full) charge battery to decrease cauterizer tip heat and get better control.
Hey Al:
It was great to see you at the San Mateo show. You come up with alot of tying tips and I take notice. Roy Powell is certainly one of the very best tyers and is known in California if not elsewhere.
My Danvise sure holds a hook, and is a darn good bang for the buck. I like it!!
One of my tips is for rubber legs. I stretch the rubber when tying it in. When relaxed it usually comes back at the angle I tied it in at.
Bob Scheidt
Thanks Al. I accidentally discovered that same thing last night while tying up some Electric Crickets. Now I can consider it an innovation instead of a mistake! I used the brush on style of CA made for fake fingernails.
The CG that Roy used was liquid in a squeeze tube. I just tried using the gel on a rubber leg and didn’t get as good of result as Roy did with the liquid. I’ll have to go to the store today to get a tube of liquid.
Regarding the new vise that Harry mentioned: I hadn’t planned on saying anything about it until I get an instructional video/DVD shot/edited to include with the vise but will share with you basically how the vise works and what it can do for the fly tier.
The overall design for the vise has been bugging me for the better part of ten years. I discussed the design with several vise manufacturers but never really got them to understand the concept until Jeff Smith (Nampa, ID fly tier) helped me assemble a prototype to illustrate the features. Ron Abby (owner of Dyna-King)saw the potential and we came to agreement last Monday on how to proceed.
The vise is an adaption of a Barracuda Indexer (the new vise is named the Barracuda Pivotal). My design added a “joint” between the vise stem and the head and another between the bent arm and the jaw assembly. Nothing really different there that is not available in one form or another in vises made by other manufacturers. The major difference is that I added 360 degree rotation to the vise jaws in addition to the 360 rotation in the vise head. What does all these “additions” bring to the tying table? Let me offer a couple of ideas.
The joint between the head and the stem allows the true rotary (in-line rotation) Barracuda to switch from true rotary to full rotation by tilting the head up. If the tier wants to got back to true rotary, they just tilt the head back to a position parallel with the tying table.
The joint between the jaws and the bent arm allow the tier to adjust the angle of the jaws based on what he/she needs. A standard Barracuda has a 90 degree angle between the bent arm and the jaw assembly. The jaws should be at about a 70 degree angle to tie a parachute - more about that in the next paragraph
Rotating the Jaws allows the tier to view the fly from different directions. EX: a quarter rotation of the jaws PLUS a quarter rotation of the vise allows the tier to view a clump of hair (to form hair wing) directly from the back or the front. View the hair clump in this way makes it much easier to evenly divide wings on hair wing flies. Rotating the jaws one half turn places a parachute post on axis so the tier can rotate the vise to apply parachute hackle rather than wrapping the hackle by hand. The one-half turn also makes placing a whip finish at the base of the parachute post easier rather than having to pull the hackle out of the way to place the whip finish at the hook eye. This is only one of many different maneuvers the vise will accomplish. I think it will be fun over time to learn all the different maneuvers tiers develope using the Pivotal.
Does any of these “bells & whistles” make any difference? For me it means nearly 18 percent productivity improvement. For the tier producing a few fishing flies, the additional cost may not be warrented <SP>; it does not carry a low end price.
When the vise is available I’ll offer to write a couple FOTW articles to illustrate some of its potential IF Jim and Deanna are interested. Such articles could border on commercialism and may not be approapriate for this web site. Jim/Deanna will have to make that call. Take care & …
Tight Lines - Al Beatty [url=http://www.btsflyfishing.com:3845c]www.btsflyfishing.com[/url:3845c]
