working with plastic eyes

somebody over on the pike fly fishing associations forum was asking the other day on the best way to clip the stalk on the back of ep plastic eyes , as the way he was doing it meant bits were flying off all over the place he had tried nail clippers but also struggled with those so i took a couple of pic's to show how i do it and trust me i reached this point from a lot of trial and error

of course you could just stick the stalks together and use then clouser style I've done that before and works fine but its not so good having those stalks if you just want them for sticking on the side of your flies

the first thing is to have a dedicated pair of scissors to do this job as they will eventually get blunt and rubbish for cutting other materials , so the first thing i do is have the scissors almost flush to the back of the eye but not quite , as i like to leave a small lump as an anchor point for the adhesive or epoxy

i then place in the palm of my hand and you'll find that you will have a slight downward pressure as you apply pressure to cut , this will hold the eye in place and stop it going flying across the room . the stalk will still fly off but you will be left with the eye in your hand .

*safety warning* always use short blade scissors these are a lot easier and safer to use than long blade ones and keep your head out of the way of the flying stalk

another cool tip is that if you use the black pupil / clear back eyes like the first picture you can add your own shading to the back with perm markers or as i like to use nail polish

*update* freind and top vermont guide drewprice has just done his own write up on how he does his eyes you can find it here DPONTHEFLY

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)