Every year of bunch of fly tyers get together at the Iowa Department of Natural Resources Springbrook State Park Conservation Educaton Center for a weekend of fly tying and other fun things. This is a fantastic place to have a group meeting.
This year I wanted to experiment with some new patterns and here are some I tied up.
Interesting assortment, well done. I have a couple of spoonflies I have been wanting / meaning to try out. I cheaped and found some chrome artifical fingernails and hot glued it to a hook. Let us know how that works on the smallies.
Panman, Tim - I got the inspiration from FAOL for the foam bodies:
(http://www.flyanglersonline.com/flytying/fotw2/082205fotw.php ) on using a dremel tool. The foam is regular craft foam (1/8 and 1/4 inch) glued up with Scotch 77 spray glue. I then use a brass tube drill bit to ‘drill’ out cyclinders. To turn the bodies I super glued the foam to a bolt head and put the bolt in my cordless drill. The drill acts like a lathe and the dremel is the cutting tool. Seemed to work pretty good considering all the work involved. Here is a picture of the setup: http://i1004.photobucket.com/albums/af163/iaflyfisher/lathe-dremel.jpg
PA Dave, Dave - the spoon fly pattern came from this Internet site and it has patterns for the hook and plastic. I thought this method was better than nails as I was after the Daredevil look. http://www.nwmangum.com/spoonfly/index.html
Have you tried just using the dremel as a lathe? I chuck a fine ring-shank nail in my dremel, poke the foam on, and use an emery board to shape. Can even cup out the face at the same time. Can crank out bodies one right after another in about a minute each. Pull off nail, poke on new foam, turn to shape and repeat for next body. I found that with the craft foam it turns better at rpm’s higher then the drill can achieve. However, using High Density Urethane which turns like a dream can be done at much slower rpm’s but has it’s limitations.
BTW iaflyfisher, where were you when I posted the Dremel swap?
Check the winter 2010 copy of Fly Tyer magazine. It has a good article on making spoon flies. If you can not locate the magazine pm me and I will scan the article and send you a copy.
Bass_Bug I have tried the nail in the Dremel and that worked but I had trouble with the emery board shaping. It didnt seem to file the foam off very well. I will try your suggestions on the speed, thanks for the ideas.
I saw the post on the swap but got busy and didnt think I had time to do the swap. Guess I will pay closer attention next time. It sucks to get old.
iaflyfisher,
I found that when turning the soft craft foam that the actual shaping is more melting it that actually sanding it off. I’ve used toothpicks as a mandrel which actually holds fine, until you put too much pressure from the emery board, then the toothpicks break. After switching to the nail, problem solved. By the way the nail I’m using is a paneling nail. It’s about the diameter of a standard round toothpick, but has small ring shanks in it that hold the foam great. If you put too much pressure on the foam, you can stop the foam and strip out the hole rending the body useless. Like anything else, it just takes a little practice.
