If you’ve been a regular visitor to these shores for some yrs now you’ll know how highly I rate Jay Smits – J-vice and all the accessories that come with it. Well for the last 8 months I’ve been using his J-Bobbin extensively for tying all my flies, and again he’s come up trumps with an incredibly clever piece of fly tying equipment.
One of the downfalls with all other regular bobbins when running thread along a hook shank due to the 90 deg positioning of the thread arm, one has to elevate and extend your arm outwards, which by all accounts can become rather tiring especially if your tying a large batch of flies over an extended period of time
The J-bobbins thread arm is positioned at 45 degrees to the bobbin allowing ones arm to be held lower & closer to your side which in turn provides a more relaxed tying posture when either wrapping thread along the hook shank or when tying materials on. Having the thread arm running perpendicular to the hook shank also allows for you to create closer, tighter, neater wraps as well.
To load a new thread bobbing onto the J-bobbin, one only needs to slacken the screw on the bobbin arm wide enough for the bobbin to slide onto the small grommets on either side. Then tighten up the screw to your desired thread tension. It looks bulky but to be honest it fits snugly in your hand and the added weight actually helps keep the thread directly over your last wrap when hanging loose.
Now I use industrial plastic coated thread for all my flies which come on slightly wider bobbins than the normal fly tying ones (They’re half the price and I get 80m per bobbin….so why not!) So after sending Jay the specs while in Finland, he managed to rustle me up an extended bobbin arm which I picked up a couple of days after I arrived. Not bad service if you ask me.
Another fantastic feature that comes with the J-bobbin is an ingenious piece of looped blue nylon.
Insert the blue looped nylon into the thread arm & simply pass your thread through the loop
And pull the standing end of nylon up the arm.
Regardless of whether you’re a professional tier like myself or someone who’s able to steal a couple of hours in an evening at his man cave, I can’t recommend this bobbin enough. Again Jay has come up with the goods with providing the fly tying world with probably one of the best bobbins out there to date.
Lastly each bobbin is individually numbered like his vises. I have J-bobbins 28 & 98 and it retails for $30 or €23. To order yourself one or two click this link
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