Disaster at the vise!!!

[Guest]

Something happened to me tonight that I just had to share. I was finishing up my flies for the streamer swap and I had just finished coating the heads with the last layer of epoxy. I had each one stuck in a small piece of balsa and was letting them dry. I was in the bedroom relaxing and watching some TV when my 3 year old(Jakob) came in the room and started playing with his cars. He then said "Daddy I got a piece of wood" and I didn't think nothing about it because when I'm messing with balsa I will give him a small piece to play with. Then about 30 seconds later he said "Here, daddy" and stuck out his hand and when I looked over I seen that he had one of the flies in his had......Oh no!

 

I let him handle my flies quite a bit so he knows how to handle them without getting stuck so I got the fly from him and went into the other room where the others were drying and I found almost all of the flies knocked over. I had a pile of glitter that I was messing with the other night and a few of the flies were nose first right into the pile of glitter.

 

Needless to say I thought most of them were ruined. Luckily the epoxy was no where near dry so I had some time to perform emergency surgery on them. After salvaging them the best I could I had to go and apply another coat of epoxy to all the heads which took quite a while and now I have to let them dry again.

 

I got a little upset with him and probably shouldn't have and if it were flies I was doing for myself I wouldn't have cared a bit. These flies were for a swap and we all want our flies to come out good and I got a little frustrated.

 

It's weird he has never gotten into my stuff but he is always interested in them and I always let him play with my scrap material but I will just have to keep my flies out of reach of his curious little hands for now on.

[Guest]

Kids ya got to love um

Sometimes disaster happen even to experienced tiers when no kids are involved.

I remember tying dry flies and having expensive hackle scattered on my tying station and reaching for something I bumped over a full opened bottle of head cement (OPPS) stupid me. I know lots of tiers have one of them type of OPPSY from time to time.

Let us know your biggest Oppsy at the vise.

 

OSD.

 

[Guest]

Worse than head cement, I've spilled super glue all over my tying table. I used to buy some in 1 oz bottles, they came with long dropper type lids, and the end of the lid was clogged, so I unscrewed it to clean it. I hit the bottle with my arm, and spilled about half of it! What a mess! Ruined everything on my table!

[Guest]

QUOTE (OSD @ Jan 26 2004, 11:58 PM)

Let us know your biggest Oppsy at the vise. OSD.

I was getting some flies ready for the next day, using a bushy dry fly on a forceps to 'paint' Permaflote on my emergers....

then I knocked over the bottle of floatant

so what do you do if you dont want to waste the precious stuff...

OF COUrse wipe it up with your best home bred & cured badger cock neck.

 

Be careful, this makes the stems dry out after a few years.

SO dip them in floatant AFTER the hackles are lashed onto the fly

 

Also I have built some absolutely beautiful flies, then taking a good look, found that some of the materials had been forgotten.. all good practice.

 

By the way, Smalliehunter, you have done a good job as a dad as your lad had the sense not to get a hook stuck in him. You are starting him off well.

 

 

hehe

 

Roy

[Guest]

LOL, luckily my kids haven't done the damage, but it's been my dogs. Here's two times things have went bad.

 

First, one of my customers on my route gave me some blue eared pheasent capes, a JC cape, and some other misc. Was excited, since I had a couple hundred dollars worth of capes and cost me $0. Came home, put them up on my flytying desk, and picked up my kids to take them to their school for a book fair. Came home, and my girlfriend went upstairs first. She got to top of stairs, gasped, and said "Honey, don't come up stairs". Well, get to top of stairs and our black lab had got ahold of them all and chewed them to shreds. What wasn't chewed was slobbered so bad they weren't salvagable. What didn't he get???? The stupid ringneck pelts I can get anywhere cheap. Never did it before, and never done it since.

 

Last time was recently. I do custom fly and jig tying kits for people. Since last incident, my girlfriend had her dog from Georgia sent up here. Her dog is half German sheppard, half ???. Well, had this big kig (about $200 worth at MY cost) in a box. All flaps were folded. Full of zonker strips, marabou, and tons of other misc. Went to bed, and woke up next morning. Came downstairs to find the box pulled off table, OPENED, and feathers, furs, and bags chewed and strewn all over the floor. Luckily, I was able to salvage most of it. I put in alot of my own materials. Only ended up being about $55 out of my own pocket. But still, there went what profits there was there. LOL. Say it this way, if my girlfriend wouldn't have stepped in, I'd had about a lifetime supply of German Sheppard Zonker Strips. LOL.

[Guest]

When I saw the title of this post I thought Smallie was referring to himself.

[Guest]

TB I have just taken 3 contest votes away from you, keep talking

[J Desjardins 0]

Super gluing the pedestal base to a desk in a hotel room, or dropping a partial package of #26 hooks on a carpet would rank as my best ones.

[flytyer 0]

Ok, I will add mine but it is more of a STUPID that disaster.

 

I was tying 10 dozen of a pattern for Randall Kaufmann. I had tied 117 of them and got to looking at them. Something was wrong but the longer that I looked at them, the more I could not see what the problems was BUT htere was something wrong with them.

 

I called my wife over (she ties as well) and told her to take a look. She could not figure out what was wrong either.

 

I decided to tie another one, take my time and see what the problem was. Well, I tied this fly and it was fine.

 

Comparing the flies, I finally found out the problem.

 

I had tied 117 of 120 flies upside down.

 

Now folks, that takes skill.

 

Then of course there are the times (plural) that the wheel came off the dryng motor and the wheel was full of tarpon flies.

 

Disaster is part of our passion.

 

Those stories would make some great reading.

 

[J Desjardins 0]

QUOTE (flytyer @ Jan 27 2004, 10:55 AM)

Then of course there are the times (plural) that the wheel came off the dryng motor and the wheel was full of tarpon flies.

I know that problem all too well. Only difference for me is that it was a rod turning in the drier.

[Guest]

Hmmmmm...

 

...for the recent Wooly Bugger swap (I'm sending them soon Shoe, honest!) I tied my batch and went on to something else. When I went to toe tag them, I kept thinking, "Boy I got done with those a lot faster than usual." Turns out I'd tied them all WRONG! I forgot the flash, and had to tie a whole new batch!

 

Then there is the urrent situation with my Wooly Bugger box. I like to tie some weighted and some not, and I usually load 10 of each pattern, 5 on one side, 5 on the other, one side of the box strictly for weighted so I can tell them apart. Of course the time came when I completely forgot which side is which and mixed them all together.

 

Then there's the many times I've impaled my self while packing Deer hair. (At least once every batch. Darn stinger hooks are sharp!)

 

 

 

 

[mozes 0]

QUOTE

Then there's the many times I've impaled my self while packing Deer hair. (At least once every batch. Darn stinger hooks are sharp!)

 

 

I second that

 

[hook-line&sinker 0]

me and superglue.. now that's a disaster waiting to happen.. already glued my fingers together several times and have glued my flys to just about everything. Somehow I got a whole tube of superglue into a box of new hooks so I had a very artistic wad of 50 shiny gold hooks. I've had the glue drip down the thread and clug the holder tube. I'm learning to control the WMD that superglue represents to me and really can't do without it.. kinda like a good roll of duct tape...

[flytyer 0]

A little help here for the weighted/unweighted flies. Tie them with different colored heads. Black for unweighted, red for weighted etc.

 

Tht is an old trick, I learned waaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy back when.

 

If I could get the super glue out of the tubes of a lot of my bobbins, I could supply a tying class with several each.

 

Like the use of WMD for the super glue. Yep, we are just waiting for it to happen. Gets all over the thread, scissors etc.

 

Don't even talk about sticking your fingers. Mine look like pin cushions. Try tying on some of the Gamakatsu hooks with the needle points. OUCH!!!!!!!!

 

Of course there is the bright side, your fingers feel good when they quit hurting.

 

 

[J Desjardins 0]

A tip for super glue mistakes is that finger nail polish remover or acetone will help remove it. It was very helpfull the day I glued my thumbs together.