Hi Shane,
While in KC, recently, Bluegill222 showed me an HMH Spartan, and he showed me that it would hold nearly that range of hooks with the standard jaws. If you need to hold smaller or larger hooks you go with different jaws. Midge jaws for tiny hooks, and I can’t remember the name of the large jaws.
A Thompson “A” will hold hooks from #18 or so down to #4 or so with standard jaws. Again with the midge jaws and the super jaws it will hold hooks smaller and larger.
You can buy a Thompson “A” on Ebay for less than $20. If you buy one get one of the older ones in the Red box. The newer ones in the whitish cardoard box are not as good as the older ones. I tie on an Ebay Thompson “A”, but would like to move up sometime, but for now it works fine, and I have tied on it for several years.
The tools you need for basic tying are the vise, sissors, bodkin (dubbing needle), whip finisher, and bobbin. You will probably also use a dubbing spinner, hair stacker, a second set of cheap sissors for cutting wire, and perhaps a set of tweezers. My dubbing spinner is a piece of bent (like a sheppards crook) piece of #12 copper wire. I have two stackers, the smaller one a Griffen (about $5) and my bigger one I made from small PVC pipe, and I have about $1 in it.
Buy a ceramic tip bobbin, as the cheapies are junk, I have two junkers…but should throw them away. You can get a griffin for less than $10, and it will be a good one, it’s what I use most of the time. For a vise, a Thompson “A” from Ebay is great to learn on. Starter sissors run less than $10, a bodkin 2 or 3 bucks (that’s what mine cost, and it turned out to be excellent quality.)
Don’t buy a cheap vise…one of the India, Pakistani, or Chinese junkers…they don’t hold the hook well, and will break sooner or later. Mine did, and that is what most of the tiers that I know have said about the cheap junker vises.
Point is you don’t need high dollar stuff to tie flies. If you find out that it is for you, and you want better stuff, you can get it later. All of the stuff that I routinely use cost less than $50 total. I do have another vise that I use once in a while, and if I count it my stuff is still less than 100.
Thing to think about when starting tying, is that most guys that start don’t keep with it. It doesn’t seem to be for everyone. Several years ago I did a survey of guys that had taught tying, and they guys reported that only about 10 to 15% of their students stick with it. For that reason, I always advise guys that want to learn to tie not to go out and buy a $300 vise. Every now and then you see a $300 vise on Ebay, most of the time a guy bought it, with the intent to learn tying, and after a while gave it up.
Again on the tools, high dollar tools do not make you a better tier, but can make tying a little easier. The tier ties the flies, not the tools. A good tier will tie excellent flies with relatively inexpensive tools, whereas a poor tier will tie poor flies on very high dollar tools.
If you do decide to go into tying, I wish you well. You may end up really liking tying. Thing to remember about the flies you tie…they don’t have to be perfect…the fish could care less. In fact I have read more than once that flies that are not very neat at all often outfish “perfect” flies. I have also read about guys who take their new nymphs and step on them before fishing them, saying that they work better once they are messed up a bit.
The vise you made shows some good thinking. A big name tier I read about still used a vise grip set up for tying with large hooks.
Regards,
Gandolf
Guess they’ll work afterall.