There was some chat on the thread on whip finish tools that wandered off the original subject (not often that happens
) - I think it was me who wandered off... anyroad, I thought it might be useful to those beginners to fly-tying to see a demonstration of a hand-tied whip finish. To be honest, I was looking for an excuse to have a go at trying out the HD movie mode on my camera (that I have had for 6 months) and have never used. In fact I have never made a movie file of any sort before. So, nothing ventured....
I made 3 files. I uploaded them to my webspace rather than delve into You Tube territory - the viewer is really a bit small to see these things properly. By doing it the way I have you can see them full screen size, which is 1280 x 720 px. The frame rate is 50 fps. I'm not sure if this is overkill, but I don't seem to be able to reduce it. The files play smooth as a baby's bottom in the editing software (Canon ZoomBrowser EX), but when I download them they choose to play in QuickTime and they jump and skip. Any ideas? If I change to RealPlayer, the first play skips, but subsequent plays are silky smooth. Anyway, feedback welcome on the whole issue of uploading and downloading .mov files - I am
so far out my comfort zone on that one...
Oh, the other thing to point out is that the files are between 70 MB and 110 MB in size, so take 3 or 4 minutes to download on a half decent broadband connection.
So, I'm ready for my close-up Mr DeMille...
First up, I stuck a big old cod hook in the vice and ran up a simple spider with a huge grizzle hackle and some nice string I found in the kitchen cupboard that changes colour every foot - brilliant - shows up really well. I did a whip finish on it, showing the way you can use your free hand to hold back the dressing so the fibres don't get trapped. You will have to ignore the lack of neatness - string good for demonstration, very poor for tying flies! Also, the cod hook would only sit very shallow in the vice, and it wobbled all over the shop! Now, be aware, this first one is me doing it the way I tie flies, which is left-handed.
Whip Finish left-handed
OK - it's a long time since I tried it right-handed (Oo-er, Mrs
), but for you right-handers, I swung it all round and had another go. Er, irony: after complaining about tying-threads not suiting
left-handers due to the direction of twist, turns out my multi-coloured string unravelled when I used it
right-handed! Bring on the Sub! I went and got some fluoro orange braid and left out the hackle bit...
Whip Finish right-handed
Putting it all together in the normal situation with a normal hook and normal thread...
Normal Use
Takes exactly 10 seconds and anyone can do it. So why the need for the tool?
I didn't add any soundtrack, partly because the camera (with its tiny mono mike) was about 6 feet behind my shoulder and partly because I was too embarrassed to subject you to my voice
. But if anything is not clear, I am happy to answer by way of this thread.
Hope it is of some use (and you can get the .movs to play smoothly!)
Col
Whip Finish Demonstration
.
Linear Mode
