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Trick for epoxy eyes

3K views 4 replies 4 participants last post by  doogue 
#1 ·
All,

The other day I was tying up some herring/bunker patterns and I was having some problems getting my pre-fabricated dry epoxy eyes to stick to my fly. That is, I was trying to stick adhesive epoxy eyes to the head of my fly (onto bucktail and a thread ball) before applying my own wet epoxy between the eyes. Per usual, I add the wet epoxy in order to secure the stick-on eyes and form a nice round epoxy head on the fly. I eventually got things to work out but I spent a few minutes trying to get the dry epoxy eyes to stick to the bucktail and thread. The goal is to get the eyes aligned with one another - which can be a pain. Wasted time.

The next time I tied the fly I wrapped some fine chenille around the head before attaching the eyes. This formed a ball that was smaller than the area of the adhesive epoxy eyes. The adhesive eyes stuck right to the chenille and the chenille soaks up wet epoxy when you dribble it between the eyes. All in all it worked out pretty well for me. A time saver and a better looking fly to boot.

Just FYI.
 
#3 ·
Doogue,That's a good idea.. especially for small eyes I would think... I generally use goop as well. Another way that works for me is I usually will do 2 or 3 coats of epoxy depending on the type of head. I will usually put the eyes on after the first coat.. just as the epoxy become sticky and not flowing. The eyes attach pretty well that way also.
 
#5 ·
I do agree with you guys in terms of taking it easy with the epoxy and applying thin coats. However, when I use the chenille trick I find that I can add all of the epoxy that I need in one application. This is only true if you either have a rotating drying wheel or the patience to spin the fly by hand.

Thanks for the tips!

-Mike
 
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