BEST Tools For Your Fly Tying Kit | Watch BEFORE You Buy!

[@dgracia18]

Nice video! Thanks Levi. Lots of great info. The ceramic bobbin is absolutely the way to go. Before ceramics came out the Matarelli bobbins were the best. I liked the thin and long barrel bobbin. I was tying a lot of flies back then teaching fly-tying classes during the winter for the Orvis San Francisco store (no longer there) and also teaching their Fly-Fishing Schools. Students never bought the right flies and I'd often end up tying flies at night for their use the next day. Anyhow after a few years my favorite bobbin started cutting the thread. I knew Frank Matarelli because I belonged to the Golden Gate Casting Club where he was also a member. I told him about it and he said to bring it with me next time I came out. So I did and he looked at it and said that yes indeed, I had sharpened the inside end of the barrel. So he took it from me to round it back out and about a week later he gave it back to me with the edges rounded over and it no longer cut the thread. Then I found the ceramic bobbin from Tiemco. They made two, a white barrel thin one and a black barrel thicker one. I got the white one first and tied with it for many years until I dropped it on a concrete floor at an FFF Conclave in Lake Tahoe. Ceramic is very hard, but also very brittle. So then I got the thicker black one and still have it. Been using it for over 25-years now. Although Levi didn't cover it, with the wishbone bobbins you'll need to adjust them if they are either too tight or too loose. Too loose and your thread will just lower on its own. Just squeeze those wishbone arms together a little bit to tighten them up. More commonly, they are too tight. Then you want to grab those wishbone arms with one in each hand and bounce them apart for a bit to lighten up their grip. You may need to adjust it anytime you change thread because all spools are not created equal! Ideally the thread will stay in place when it is handing from the fly. But if you have to pull hard on the bobbin to get more thread out, that's too tight. You want the thread to feed nice and evenly off the bobbin as you are tying without the need to pull off an inch or two each time you need to wind some wraps on the hook. Orvis had/has one with a ceramic insert in a stainless steel barrel and that works well too. But because it's an insert just at the end of the barrel it's flared out to fit the insert there. That makes it a little tougher when you need to wind thread near the back of a small fly because that flared tip won't fit into the throat of the hook. It will still work but you have to manipulate the thread past the hook point and if you're not careful you'll hit the hook point and break your thread. So absolutely go with the ceramic like Levi said. One other thing real quick, if you tie with Kevlar thread (I tie glo-bugs with 2/0 Kevlar), never use it on a metal barreled bobbin. It will sharpen the inside edge entirely too quickly. A;ways use a bobbin with a ceramic barrel or at least a ceramic insert on the tip of it. Also when cutting Kevlar thread, never use the point of your scissors because it will dull them pretty quickly. always use the very thick back section of the blades to cut the Kevlar so you can continue to use your scissors to cut other materials too. I'd suggest you continue to buy bobbins perhaps a couple a year. That way you can use one for each of your most commonly used threads so you don't have to thread them all the time. I use mostly 8/0 thread on size 12 through 24 hooks so I have a spool of 8/0 black on one. I also use brown 8/0 a lot because I tie up a lot of Pheasant Tail nymphs. I also have yellow, tan, and white 8/0 on bobbins. I use 3/0 yellow for tying hopper so that's on a separate one too as is some 6/0 black thread that is NOT Uni thread. Uni-thread is great thread and stronger than most threads so I use it for most things. However it is a round polyester thread and counter-spinning it to flatten it out doesn't really flatten it much. With a 6/0 nylon thread I can spin it in one direction while it's hanging from the fly to make it thinner and round, or I can counter-spin it to unwind it and make it flat. I use that on flies #12 down to #22. I most commonly use it when I'm tying something that requires a floss Body or tag such as Atlantic Salmon flies. That flat 6/0 Nylon thread makes a very flat underbody and you can get a really flat and even floss body with it. If you use a round thread and leave any little gaps in between your underbody windings, the floss body will have little bumps and grooves in it. The fish don't care the fisherman do. So I'd suggest you get two bobbins to start and put black or brown on one and use the second one to swap spools of thread. You can add another bobbin every now and then and in a few years you'll hardly ever have to change threads. Instead, you just grab the bobbin with the thread you need on it. Sorry to say, I am NOT a fan of whip finishers...at all. Back in 1976 I learned how to tie a whip finish with my fingers. If you get the tools, you typically have to buy a regular one and an extended reach one. The extended reach one is for tying a whip finish somewhere along the body or at the tail where the normal whip finish tool doesn't reach. You can reach anywhere on a fly if you learn how to tie it with your fingers. Another advantage of tying a whip with your fingers is that your fingers never fall off your hands. It's not unusual at all for a whip finish tool to fall off your tying table get underneath some of the materials you have on your desk. You always know where your fingers are, and it's really not hard to do. If you see many of Levi's fly-tying videos, you'll see that he uses both half-hitches in his tying and also a whip finish that does with his fingers. One place the tool is good though is if your hands are rouch and cracked and beyond anything that a pumice stone can smooth out. I once had a student who worked construction and he used one because his hands were too rough and the thread got caught in the cracks of fingers. If you don't have that problem with your fingers though, don't get a whip finish tool, learn how to do it with your fingers.

[@Tridentflyfishing]

Hi Dan. Great backstory, as always. Thanks for the history lesson!

[@mattokeefe691]

Thanks man. Great information and insight

[@ПавлоКовалев_89]

why didn't you mention the dubbing twister?