How to Whip Finish by Hand: Basic Fly Tying Instructions

Video Transcript

" Hi, this is Robert Brown for Expert Village.com and in this video clip I am going to be demonstrating how to whip finish by hand. A lot of people when they start fly tying don’t have one of these tools. They are not too expensive but it is just kind of a luxury item. When you are first starting out, you can actually do it with just two fingers. What you do in order to do this is pull out some thread on your bobbin. You need six to eight inches. You take your index and middle finger of your right hand and you place them directly on top of the thread. You create a loop with this motion here and thread is crossing. The thread is really small so it is hard to see. You get it started and you just follow it right in. You do that about three times and if you have big fingers like me, it’s a nightmare. When you are done doing it, one of the problems doing it by hand is it is very easy to capture some fibers of the fly and you don’t want those little things captured and you are not and screwing up your head so you have to trim them off. After you have trimmed them off you go ahead and go ahead and trim your fly floss off and then you have the finished head. The advantage for this tool as you saw in the other video is you have much more precise control over where your fly floss is being laid on the head of the fly. "