[ecoman]

Hackle pliers :- I have quite a number littering my 'spares' drawer. All of them - admittedly not in the top price range - have let me down at critical stages, some are downright rubbish.
Having burned my fingers before on other products, paying for the brand name rather than actual functional worth, I avoided paying a lot of money other than one fly-tying tool which was recently discussed.

I was, however, impressed with a report I read on miniature arterial clamps.  I purchased a pack of six through Amazon.  They are 65 mm. in length and have a superb holding grip.

For my hands, whilst being so slim that they do not impede other fly-tying operations or tangle, they are a wee bit fine to get hold-of, so here are my workshop tinkering results :-

Three of the six came with curved-end noses.  On these I cut the curved sections away with a dremel and buffed them up.  The ring on the end of the handles is made from stainless spring spines from discarded windscreen wiper blades.

My verdict - expensive. Very functional. Dependable.  Get hold of it and I for one will never have to look elsewhere.

[Marc Fauvet]

are you wrapping six hackles at a time ? 

[Mike Barrio]

Looks like you are having lots of fun making things ...... enjoy

Best wishes
Mike

[ecoman]

   It might be an idea Marc - bigger and bushier flies to cope with the size of the fish up in this chilled and waterlogged part of the globe !

Things are very slow in this area.  Repeated cold winds and very little fly about - although yesterday I noted a hatch of hawthorn fly around a rough part of our hedging by the house.
'Not much use to the trout several miles away on the open moorlands though.

A friend on Skye had a cast for an hour on a loch near to his place and caught a couple - just as an experiment to see if anything was happening.  He knew that the loch contained mainly small fish, but reported that they were as thin as eels.

Fingers crossed for a boost in weather and food.

[Marc Fauvet]

  It might be an idea Marc - bigger and bushier flies to cope with the size of the fish up in this chilled and waterlogged part of the globe !

 

[ecoman]

This is fun - waiting for a 'day' - and today might mark a change as there's a bit of rain in the air and a gusting breeze which feels to be more from the South - this was at five this morning.
Anyway, tinkering with my fly tying tools, and I always fidget until any tool suits me, and this included my 'Jack-of-all-trades' tools used in my self-employed mode after I retired off the estate, is a way of passing the time in between tying a surplus of flies.

I thought to take these pictures in order to clarify the size situation regarding the hackle pliers I was tinkering with.

On the left is a completely useless, cheap, teardrop pliers which were well advertised to fool the gullible, such as me.

Then the 'English' hackle pliers, with the 'easy-use' finger pads, the latter of which are sometimes a tangling curse, and despite the addition of bicycle valve tubing, will still tend to slip at the vital moment.

Then on to the unadorned artery clamp, much slimmer and less obtrusive, but a wee bit fine for me to grasp.

Then on to a couple of 'customised' artery clamps. Very strong and positive grip but ensure that the outside bearing edges are smoothed off in order not to cut into the hackle.  Next experiment is valve tubing on one jaw.

[ecoman]

'Must be doing something wrong because the image didn't add to my last reply.  I'll try it as an attachment.