Ephemerella

The risk is not necessarily with where the hooks are made, but in the care and consistency of the tempering, and of course the source and characteristics of the raw wire. After the hooks are formed from relatively soft wire, they are tempered, which partially aligns the iron atoms into a crystal matrix. The magic is getting the metal hard enough to resist bending on a big fish, while not making the metal brittle (snapping off when one crushes down the barb, or again a big fish). Each hook size, and sometimes each batch of raw wire, requires its own tempering oven temperature curve, heating and cooling to optimize the metal characteristics. A factory that can do this consistently makes better hooks. Those that try to economize by buying wire from the lowest bidder, or running the same tempering curve on all the hook sizes, or are not meticulous in controlling temperature and time, get lousy results. I'm guessing hooks from TEMU are not made with the needed care, and they know no one is sending them back for a refund.

RIP Mike! I was fortunate enough to have met him at the Fly Tying Symposium about 13-14 years ago. A gentleman, always willing to answer questions, provide tying tips, etc. His books are well written and have excellent photography (his, no doubt) showing various techniques for tying the parts of a classic salmon fly. -Peter

Thank you! I hope you enjoyed the site and learned something from the Pattern Notes for any patterns you looked at. It is a relatively small number of tyers that tie these flies, and only a few more that enjoy seeing them and learning about them. At shows I'm busy all day with interested folks, but that's maybe 12-15 days a year. Web site traffic on my site is pretty low - in the tying season maybe 2-4 a day, peaking to 6-8 hits on Sundays to Tuesdays after a show. But I do get hits from around the world, even with the overall small number of site visitors.

Sure...my web site has about 180 of these unnamed, unknown, or unusual Carrie Stevens patterns, along with a little info on where the original fly was discovered in my search, and my ties of them. I don't sell anything on the site (yet) and it is ad-free and malware/virus free. The site: www.petersimonsonflydresser.com Look for "Catalog of Patterns" on the top of any page on the site. I have not yet taken decent photos of the two "new" previously unknown streamers that I did tie at the show. In the next month or so I will be adding 5 more patterns, found this year, after I get to tying them, taking the images, installing them onto the site, etc. The images attached are a couple of the 180 on my site. These are my renditions of the patterns. The one with the deep red and light olive wing I identify as "Unnamed Streamer LH-04" and the white one with the barred shoulder I call "SP - Unknown 4". The true names are (still) unknown. The SP - Unknown 4 was found in the Schmidlin-Palmer collection, and since Don Palmer's death a few years ago the collection was auctioned off and split up to various owners. The Unnamed Streamer LH-04 was in another private collection, the owner of which generously shared photos of the original with me, and I was able to identify its recipe.

I'll be there tying various streamers from the Rangeley region of Maine, including several recently discovered, unpublished unnamed patterns by Carrie Stevens. -Peter

Chevy 1500 4x4 pickup, and Subaru Forester

only a little better than, "Hey, hold my beer."

Goose biots are the feather fibers from the leading edge of wing feathers. Take a single edge razor and cut the stem (rachis), and keep the side with the shorter fibers - biots. Some cut the stem so only a small bit of it (maybe 1/4 of it) is attached to the biot fibers.

They say (read it on the internet so it must be true 😜) that it smells like burning hair - silk and hair are both protein based.

Tying there...drop by if you are going. Peter Simonson

Unlimited resources. But... What I found with that most recent tragedy in Maine, was that once-reliable news outlets (including those that publish exclusively on the internet) were so rushed to be "first with the story" that they published erroneous information. It would appear they sacrificed fact-checking for expediency (and probably advertising revenue). Some of the errors should have been caught by anyone with a modicum of experience or education or familiarity with the location. Further, other news outlets would republish these erroneous items, no doubt using the fact that someone else published the (erroneous) item as confirmation. Now here I sound like an old curmudgeon. This is a real deterioration of news media. I note this is independent of the political leanings of the various news outlets. My father spent his career in the news media business and to him it was important that the reporters and editors were able to substantiate the facts as published, both as a business strategy (keeps away expensive litigation) and as a way to maintain the reputation and integrity of their news outlet. I'm guessing today's news media is more concerned with short term profitability than long term reputation and survival of the business. As a consequence, while there is more information available, it is less reliable. Also, since it may be difficult to trace the source of the published information, one cannot easily discern whether any report is from independent sources or independently collected information, or is re-publication of someone else's erroneous report. Not sure what the solution is here, other than to not believe everything published until there are sufficient number of independent sources stating the same information. That, and, of course, not buying products advertised on outlets with unreliable reporting.

John, Nice fly. Good to see you back on the forum...I found a few postings from "Isonychia" from 2008 that are yours, I believe...

Given you can buy a 1000W unit at Wally World for about $80 or less, I'd say replace it. I suspect the retail cost of the parts is driven by the cost of storage and a large number of unique parts - the parts that fail on microwaves typically are the handles, keypads, keypad plastic overlay - all unique to each brand and model. The electronic innards are often the same across brands. The sad fact is that a microwave lasts between 4 and 10 years, and then it begins to have parts failures. Washing machines (the old-school top leaders, anyway) on the other hand are mostly made by 1 manufacturer and have common parts regardless of model or "quality" implied by the brand, which are cheap to stock compared to the number of washing machines out there, and their unit cost ($400 -$1500). Except the computers and other wizardry in the control panels, which are unique to brand and model - and hence ridiculously priced. So one can generally keep an old school top-loader in repair for 15+ years easily, and there's a you-tube video produced by parts suppliers for nearly every diagnosis and repair. Just watch your phone as you slowly dissect and repair the washer following the on-screen pro.

Thanks Steve - I've enjoyed this site since about 2005 or so and seen its ups and downs. Your hard work is much appreciated - even if it did seem like work to you. Wishing you all the best, and please don't be a stranger. -Peter

Even the venerated Thompson A vise had a design weakness. The pin used as the fulcrum for the clamping lever (handle) would fatigue. Many years ago, replacement pins were available, for not much more than the postage, but they too suffered the same fate. I eventually replaced the 3rd failed pin with a hardened roll pin, which still works, although I have not used it in years, having moved on to an HMH Spartan (one of the early versions).