Re: [VFB] dry hackles, gauges, sorting

[DonO]

----- Original Message ----- From: Peter Gramp ... I strip every hackle from the pelt and sort them...   Pete    wow...  If I stripped every hackle from my saddles and sorted them by sizes... well, let's just say that'd be the only thing I'd be doing for the next 5 years.  It takes longer for me to find the right saddle for the job than it does to find the right size hackle on the saddle.     That is one of the nice things about necks (capes).  The chicken kindly sorted his neck hackles into sizes so it would be easy for tiers to get at the right one.  :o)   I have the Whiting gage, and it is nice.  I just never use it.  I'm like Martin.  I know about what I need, then make adjustments for the fly application.  My saddles do have many hackles on each with the barbs flared for an inch or two (like those in a Whiting 100 pak) to make finding the right size quicker.  The hackles can fool you.  They look like a smaller size, but when flared, are sometimes sizes larger than you think.   You younger (or newer) tiers just don't know how good you got it, with the quality of hackles these days.  I can remember the days when it took two, sometimes three hackles from a neck to get a good dry fly.  And we'd cheat by using one or two hackles too long, palmer them, then trim them a little shorter than what was needed.  Then we'd palmer the last correct-sized hackle through the others to get what we thought then was a nice full collar.    I tied up a half-dozen size #24 Adams the other night, and I must have used all of a third of a Whiting Midge Cree saddle feather.  Having so much hackle to hold on to when palmering is one thing I never take for granted.  I don't know where my hackle pliers is since it is so long since I last used it.    DonO