Fly Turner

[Finjunkie 0]

Rod drying motors come in different RPMs. Flex Coat makes some of the best. They last for a very long time. I have had mine for 15 years.

[ninja115 0]

Well, I finish it today. Here it is. I clocked it at 3 RPM's. Hope that it is good enough. $10 for a used microwave and a bunch of stuff I had laying around the garage.

 

Here is the first epoxy fly I made using the elbow/wrist turner. Now I have to stop by the shop and pick up some more hooks so I can use my new turner.

[JSzymczyk 0]

looks as if it will work just fine. One thought--- if you have any kids around, or other curious people, insulate the connections at the motor.

[Stippled Popper 0]

A couple more thoughts:

 

The larger the diameter of the foam disc to which the flies are attached, the more flies which may be done with a single batch of epoxy

and that also will save a bit of $$ in the long run.

 

I have a bunch of pins with alligator clips attached which are stuck into my foam disc. This helps evenly space flies so it is less likely to

bump my hand into the epoxy of flies already coated.

[ninja115 0]

The black leg is insulated, because I took all the wires out of the inside of the microwave. I need to heat shrink the white leg though. I am also planning on building a disk with the alligator clips in it, possibly out of thin piece of wood. The disk on there was just a piece of noodle float that I had in the garage laying around.

 

Does anybody know where to buy the gray(or another color) foam they make fly boxes out of? If not, do you know exactly what it is named? I've tried searching for it and have come up with nada. I have a few 1.5" x 12" pieces that came as shipping padding on the corners of a patio table that they bought at the beginning of the summer. I saw the material on the back of a cork board at the local craft store, but no where else in the store by itself. The craft foam they had was close, but nowhere near thick enough. I also would like it to replace the white close cell foam in one of my fly boxes that is destroyed. If you know of someplace that might even sell already cut ripple foam sheets that would be swell too.

 

On a side note: Sometimes my fly turner goes clockwise and sometimes it goes counter-clockwise. Any Thoughts? I know it's AC, and think its just where the motor is sitting when it's at rest. I have never seen a carousel in a microwave spin backwards though. If I hooked up a diode in-line with one of the power legs would that fix my problem? Maybe another reason I should have gone with DC!

[perchjerker 0]

If you live anywhere near where any new houses are being built, you should be able to pickup scrap pieces of the "Blue Board" foam insulation that is put on the outside after the plywood outer sheeting is put up. It is about 3/4 of an inch thick, and makes great foam discs. You can trace around the outside of a coffee can to layout a nice round disc.

 

Some small AC motors do reverse polarity every time they are turned off. I have seen microwave tables do this, though my current one does not do this. This should be of no concern for a turner. Mine does it, and it has not created problems of any kind.

[Stippled Popper 0]

Sometimes my fly turner goes clockwise and sometimes it goes counter-clockwise. Any Thoughts?

 

I know enough about electricity to let someone who does know something about it deal with it.

 

But I've found that the change in direction of spin in your turner is common in microwave ovens.

[petelangevin 0]

My microwave changes direction . It should not matter in the drying . Great suggestion on the blue insulation!

[JSzymczyk 0]

The newer microwave turntables I've paid attention to reverse every time they're turned on. One time CW, next time CCW, etc.

[Kirk Dietrich 0]

All these posts over the years on turners has finally gotten to me. I asked some friends at work yesterday to keep their eyes out for an old microwave, bbq grill with rotisserie and lo and behold one of my friends told me he has a garage kept grill for ten years with a rotisserie that he only used twice and I could have it. He brought it in today, SS casing with on/off switch. I know what I'll be doing this weekend. Now, when I'm done epoxying, I can go do something without having to flip the stands for twenty minutes. I'm still going to use the clips though, I learned from my first foam flip stand that when you stick a bug with weedguard it flips to the side. The clips work really good with the weedguarded spoons that I do so often.

Thanks for the motivation and the ruination of me.

 

Kirk

[Capt Bob LeMay 0]

There's one other method in building drying mounts for your motor. Most tyers use a single large foam wheel... since I'm also a rodbuilder I long ago decided to use individual cork rings mounted on short sections of old fiberglass rod pieces. I have four or five of them that allow me to do two to three dozen flies at a time for production work. Here's a few pics....

Tight Lines

Bob LeMay

[Stippled Popper 0]

Captain Bob's posting of images of his rod turner based fly turning system brings to my mind some

things I've wondered about over the years:

 

1. I plug in my turner when I put my first fly to turn, unplug to put on each additional on and plug in again.

It seemed the best way to handle this. I didn't have very good results trying to put new ones on while the

device is spinning. Figured that the unit might last longer than wearing out the switch. Is this how most do it?

 

2. Some insert the hook point directly into the foam or cork as in Captain Bob's example. Some use

alligator clips. I use the clips because I had problems caused by flies coming out of the turned because

I'd not inserted the hook deeply enough and worried about damage to the foam from repeatedly inserting

hooks. This doesn't seem to be an issue for most. But I wonder whether the foam or cork has to be replaced

after a while for those who use the direct insert method.

[gpd4 0]

Mine is a BBQ rotisserie motor. I cut off about 3" of the square rod that holds the meat and shimmed it tight inside the motor so it wouldn't fall out (it's a loose fit out of the box). Then I took the 'meat fork' and mounted that on the stub of the square rod. My wheel is 4 styrofoam discs glued together and speared on the meat fork. I soldered 3" pieces of music wire to all my clips and just stick them in the foam.

[Capt Bob LeMay 0]

On the end of my turner drive rod I added a short piece of rod grip to act as a flexible joint. The shafts of the drying sticks are only slightly friction fit inside the piece of rod grip. As a result I can grab any drying stick momentarily to add or remove a bug, when released the whole fixture resumes turning (no on or off each time). My motor is set up with a timer so that it automatically quits at the two hour mark in any drying session. I never use any epoxy, much preferring to use FlexCoat instead (a two part polymer rod finish that needs to rotate for at least an hour after application -sometimes a bit longer..). I'm sure that those using a single foam wheel can set theirs up so that you could stop it momentarily while the motor is still turning to get the same effect. By the way, I've always thought that a "pool noodle", one of those floating toys for kids would make a great foam wheel (or you could mount them in series the way I used cork rings).

 

Those same cork rings, by the way, are easily 30 years old now. They've been used for hundreds and hundreds of dozens for shops and other customers.

[perchjerker 0]

Kirk:

 

If you use 'blue board' for your discs, the cost of replacement is limited to the cost of transportation to a home construction site. You can probably pick up enough scrap in one trip to last a lifetime. More often than not, after a heavy, windy thunderstorm you can find full sheets of the stuff scattered all over creation!

 

I scavenge it to make bases for head cement bottles for the students in our club's annual fly tying courses, and have never had a problem finding it in an area of urban expansion.

 

Some years ago I came by a small horizontal device used to rotate test-tube cultures in a microbiology lab. I have four 'blue-board' discs on the shaft, and each are about 4 inches in diameter. The secret to adding more than one disc is to add a support for the 'free' end. With such support, you will be amazed at how many 'bugs' you can turn at one time.

 

If your discs are large enough, and you are reasonably well coordinated, you can add bugs to the turning disc without knocking a previously mounted one off if you mount by the hook. The same can be done with the alligator clip, provided that you have soldered a l age darning needle into the base of the clip.

 

If you use a long rod, and an adequate support, for your turner, you can cover the rod with the foam 'noodle' sticks so popular with kids at the swimming pool instead of the foam disc. Simply slide a piece of the 'noodle' over the rod.

 

I do have a simple rotary 'on/off' switch in my wiring to facilitate turning it on and off as the occasion requires.

 

Cheers!