I think oldfrat hit it right, make sure you advance one direction as you progress the whip. I never paid attention to this but Old recommends going from eye to back, somewhere I read that you should always progress the opposite way (towards the eye) and never whip finish backwards… I usually do it like oldfrat said so I don’t know if it really matters or not. Also, sometimes if you clip your thread too close it will slide out and come un-done or sometimes mine will break when I pull the whip finish tight and it comes undone too.
And lastly, make sure you’re using the tool correctly and that you’re doing it correctly by hand as well…
[This message has been edited by Jgoding (edited 23 March 2006).]
For some odd reason, many of my flies are becoming undone right where I use the whip finish. I have a whip finisher tool, and I sometimes do it by hand as well. I just dont think that it is right for the fly to become unravled after I whip finished it down. My best thought is that my heads are not very good, so therefore, the whip knot slides down and onto the hook eye. What can I do in order to get a better whip finish knot and to keep it hold?
I’ve never had that problem and it is kind of hard to diagnose without seeing it, but try this.
Start your whip finishing near the eye of the hook. Do at least 5 wraps with the whipping tool, moving each one back on the fly a bit so that you end up with 5 rows of whip finish wrap over the thread that will become your tag end. Try to make these wraps resaonably tight. After you have removed the whipping tool tug the thread back to tighten it all up, then trim the thread.
Jgoding, I may be doing it wrong when I start at the eye and work back. It is just the way I learned and Imay have learned wrong. It works for me, though, as it doesn’t require that I trim the thread quite so close to get a neat finish.
The key point I was really tryng to make is that the whipping wraps should be next to each other, not on top of each other.
On smaller flies it probably doesn’t make a lot of difference which direction you wrap the whipfinish. However having said that let me add, for best results and best apperance one should wrap the whipfinish from rear to front. Here is the reason. As you pull the whipfinish tight the thread will always disappear under the front most wrap. If you wrap from front to rear, the last wrap will be at the rear and the thread will have to transverse across the prior wraps to disappear under the front wrap. This results in a short section of thread running more or less horizontal over the outside of the head. On larger flies not only does it look bad but it is subject subject to wear and damage.
Jim, thanks. I guess I’ve been doing it backwards.
But I’ll admit to geting lost at the word “transverse”. Probably cuz I mostly tie smaller flies.
I’ll experiment with this to see what I learn. Doing stuff like that is one of the things I like about tying. Always something new and better just over the mountain and worth exploring.
I think probably you are making the head too big, in which case if your finish is not tight enough it will indeed slip down the slope and come off. Or you are tying the head too close to the eye, and instead of putting the head and whip finish behind the eye you are going over it, again causing the loops to slide off…
Leave a little more room behind the eye, make sure when you tie the finish you pull it fairly tight obviously without breaking the thread. Don’t make your heads too big, keep them in proportion and neat. Practice makes perfect…
This is more a reflection on my tying than someone elses. I saw a fly tying show where the tier was doing a manual whip finish. He was like silk and faster than lightning. Of course his purpose was to show everybody how good he was and not really teach.
Mine kept falling apart.Basically I was doing a glorified half hitch and not a whip. I use the tool, because by learning the wrong way when I get lazy I go back to old habits. Whipping back from the eye makes a big difference in aesthetics and durability.
I’m also so anal that back in the 70’s when everybody was wearing rainbow suspenders I wore a belt at the same time. I put a drop of head cement either on the knot or coat the thread on the inch closest the the head before I whip finish.