when i first started tying, the price was real cheap… didnt have money to buy a storebought vice so i made one… it was a clothespin screwed to a stick and stuck in a peice of 2 by 4…feathers was just whatever i found in the yard or the chicken coop & fur was from whatever had hair like discarded peices of carpet or just about anything… my grandma made all our clothes so i had plenty of thread to tie with… she allways left a foot or 2 on the spools when she throwedem away… later on i got a thompsonvise, the older model what has a knob at the rear to tighten the jaws… now i use a danvise and have tying tools for every tying situation emaginable, (6 tying stations all with vices, tools & tying materials), teaching a tying class and have a walk in closet full of tying materials…
My first vise was a small pair of needle nose vise grips that I would stand up in a couple holes drilled in a board.They actually worked pretty good.I would pick up feathers from the ducks and geese at a local pond and sometimes use packing foam cut to size as bodies.Thank God for sharpies.
-Steve
I guess I started with a kings ransom compaired to you. I got a cheap vise (special made for fly fying) and new tools for about $50 total. I’ve upgraded my tools since then, but my ability is about the same.
You know to this day I carry a very small pair of vise grips and loupe with me when fishing, comes in very handy. Before my Regal that is how I would fumble around making my own flies.
Sewing scissors & small vise grips with thread right from the spool…
Grasshopper wings from blades of grass… Dab of head cement and
volia, blade hopper, come and get it…
Steve
I was really fortunate. A fellow FAOL’er loaned me my first vise and gave me a couple pair of scissers and misc. other tools (bodki, bobbin, etc.). Because of his generosity, I got off to a good start with high quality stuff and I do think it made a difference. I really love to tie and got off to a very quick start.
Some of the tools he gave me are ones I still use in every tying session because I appreciate his gift and because it was quality stuff.
As I gather more stuff, I will, someday, pass on his generosity to a new tyer or a new fly fisher.
Jeff
My fingers,-----mothers thread varn and chicken feathers. It worked and I still can tie with my fingers. BILL
When I was 7 my family went on a camping trip to the Rangeley Lakes area in Maine.
On the way my father filled my head with stories of the region’s rich fly fishing heritage. I had seen Ted Williams cast at the Boston Sportsman’s show earlier in the year and I wanted to cast and fish like Ted.
Later at the campsite I tied up a fly on a bait hook with some of my mother’s olive colored wool knitting yarn, grabbed a rod and headed down to the lake
I had little casting experience, but I did get my homemade fly out far enough to catch a fish (a smelt) My first fish on a fly. My first fish on a fly that I tied myself. 
When I started tying for real, in the early 70s, I had a Herter’s vice and some cheap sewing scissors.
For materials, I used sewing thread and whatever I could scrounge up along with feathers and other stuff that I found…
Kinda like what I still use :rolleyes:
In 1996 I received a fly tying kit from Wal-Mart that had a Fly Master Supreme Vise in it, the kit at the time I think was around $30.00 and included all the stuff I needed to get started. I still remember my first fly I tied, now that was funny, I kept it for along time, I remember that I was so excited, lol That fly was a site to look at, but it was my first one and I could do it!
I didn’t catch a fish on my first fly but I was so excited about it, I was off to the races with it, I liked doing it. I had fun collecting tying material from nature, road kill, found feathers, hunting etc…
That is an easy question. My first real fly tying vise came in an Official Boy Scout fly tying kit and was a stamped metal piece of cr*p that would hardly hold a hook at all. The kit also came with small packages of brightly colored but totally useless feathers and hair. Still and all, at the age of 11, I was totally hooked on fly tying.
A year later, I purchases a Herter’s vise and tool kit. That was in 1957 and I used it right up through the mid 1970s. I believe the total cost for the vise, scissors, bobbin, mirror, and bobbin rest was about $17. I still have a soft spot in my heart for Herter’s and Waseca. 8T 
A classic situation. My uncle mad me one where he worked. My grandfather gave me a HI rod for Christmas and my dad gave me a silk fly line. I was twelve.
I’ve only been tying flies for 2 years. A friend offered me an old vise of his. That was a very nice gesture, but I never liked taking hand-outs. I don’t know why that is…
Anyway, I did a bit of research, based my decision on a good quality vise at a VERY affordable price (so I wouldn’t invest much in case I didn’t stick with it…), and bought a Danvise.
For materials…wow, its hard to remember what the first materials were…there’s been so many SINCE then. I believe I bought wire, marabou, chenille, thread, hooks, some Flashabou, and some hackle. Just what I needed to tie up some woolly buggers!
it was so long ago but i remember it being a kit put together by the instructor
stationary vise
hooks (mustads)
the usual tying materials
My first was a tying kit I got for Christmas when I was 12. I think my dad gave it to me so I would tie flies for him to fish with. I think he figured it would be a flash in the pan and he’d be lucky to get anything out of it. It was a lame kit with a lousy little stamped vise not worth a hoot,just like 8T’s, likely identical…Then I, like 8T got me a fine set up from Herter’s. been tyin ever since, 42 years now, off and on… no longer have the Herter’s stuff, except the bobbin. I built the vise I have now afew years ago, a camlock style, and I like it quite well. The old man would be surprised how far I’ve come. He’s been gone a lot of years now…ModocDan
All of my first fly tying supplies and materials were mail order purchased from HERTER’s. Many well-known manufacturers made the tools and vise and labled them with the Herter’s name. My “Herter’s” vise was made by Thompson. I also purchased from many now defunct suppliers such as Finnysports in Ohio, Reed Tackle in Caldwell NJ, etc. Man am I dating myself…better stop
The Good Ole Thompson A Vise, Matterelli Bobbin & Whip Finisher, & cuticle scissors.
Bodkin I made myself (a large sewing needle shove into a wooden dowell !!!
My first one was a very cheap import vise that came with a complete set of tools. It was an atrocious thing. Wouldn’t hold a hook for anything. As I would try to tye a fly the hook would either move up or down in the vise depending upon which direction I was applying thread tension. It’s a wonder I didn’t just give up tying altogether.
After that I went through a Renzetti Travler and a Dyna King Barracuda (which are both true-rotary vises as most of you know). I just never learned to like the way those vises “felt” and I never used the rotary function for anything other than turning the fly upside down to lacquer the heads on parachute patterns.
I have been tying for the past five or six years on an HMH Standard and absolutely love it. It’s not a “true rotary” - the jaws rotate but not inline, but I find it really fits me. When I rest my hand on it or just put a hook in, it is very comfortable for me. I’ve never once had a hook slip in it and the midge jaws offer better hook access than any other midge jaws I’ve seen. I figure I’ve probably tied somewhere in the neighborhood of +/- 5,000 flies or so and I’m still really happy with it.
-Darryl
A Thompson Model H – made out of cast iron of all things, and quite incapable of holding a hook any smaller about a size 12. I still have it 44 years later, and still occasionally use it to tie streamers.
I didn’t have a bobbin; waxed thread had to do. Sewing scissors to cut with.
Since I lived within walking distance of a millpond full of bluegills, crappies and pickerel, and was able to fish about two hundred days a year, I conservatively estimate that I caught over 5,000 fish on flies tied in that vise.
Today I own a small collection of much more expensive vises, and the fish per vise ratio can’t be nearly as high. You don’t need high end equipment to tie flies that catch fish.
Except for Bill Fitzgerald, I don’t know how most of you guys are going to face up to puberty.
I started when I was discharged from WW II in 1947, buying some of the stuff touted as being the best in the world from Herters. By today’s standards it was all junk but we must give him credit for really spreading interest in the craft. For me, that’s over 60 years of practice and after having peaked out as a poor tier I’m now on the slippery slope. But it’s always been fun.
my first vise has a funny story to go with it. Best Fishing Buddy and i took up fly fishing as a retirement thing, never having had anything to do with it previously. when the first winter came along, i signed up for a fly tying course at the local shop. i signed up by phone. after a couple of days, the lady in the shop called back to find out what i needed.
“Do you have a vice?” i heard her ask.
Long silence…
“Well,” i said, “expensive chocolates and soft porn, since you ask.”
A…much…longer…silence…
“Can you come in some day before the class starts?” she asked. “We’ll fix you up with what you’ll need.”
now we both laugh about that. can’t tell you the brand, because it’s in the other house, but it still works just fine. BFB caught the first fish with a fly i tied; it was a lovely brookie on an elk hair caddis. eventually he met Norm Norlander at a show, and you can guess the rest.
My first vise was a cheap, cheap, cheap Sunrise. It lasted about 100 flies. That was the last cheap vise I owned.
I can’t really complain. It got me into tying, and made me really appreciate quality products.