riverman wrote:

In my beginner days, every single fly tying instruction book I read (that
means both of them) had the same 'inside hint' that a hair stacker was not
really necessary... another said you could align the hairs by hand just as
easily, with a bit of practice.

Okay, well this is a topic I've spent a lot of time discussing with
"contemporaries" over the years... I've been tying for 40 years now, and
for the first 30 of those years, I NEVER used a stacker. Part of it was
for the first ten or so, I never knew one existed, so I didn't know I
should want one or didn't have one =)

I learned how to prepare and stack hair right off the hide (or tail)
from the guys I tied with as a kid and I guess I was lucky in that
respect, and I got to be pretty good at it!

Then as I got into more of the tricks and books and all, I found out
about this stacker device and thought, "gee, that would make this a lot
easier"... but as funny as it sounds, you needed to learn how to use
one... I mean, it seems easy enough, you cut off a hank of hair, stuff
it in a tube, tap it down, grab the butt ends and pull it out, right?

WRONG!!! You still need to prepare the hair (it has to be clean, you
need to remove all the underfur, pull out the 'wild' hairs first, etc.)
and once you've done all of that, if there's static build-up in the tube
or the hair... it won't stack right.

Oh yeah, and there's dealing with curved (hair from the side of an
animal) and or curly hair (calf tail, for example) still... stackers
don't seem to help much more with these.

But now that I'm getting a bit better at tying, I find aligning the hairs a
RPITA! I tried a lipstick case, but when I dumped the hairs out, they all
fell into disarray again. I think a hair stacker really is a good idea, but
I don't know for sure because I've never really used one.

Well, I don't know if you've really missed anything. I tried doing it on
the cheap with a lipstick tube, a shell casing and a shortened pill
bottle first and these were all more trouble than they were worth,
especially seeing as a real commercial stacker is only around $5-10
bucks =)

But then you'll find that it's not "one size fits all" and a small
stacker REALLY is better for short hair, and a large one is better for
longer and/or larger clumps of hair, so you'll have a couple of them...
and you'll learn the trick about pulling a used fabric softener sheet
through them to break the static (yep, it really works!)

And then you'll see there are a bunch of different ones, like the
Renzetti aluminum and brass one, and the Griffin heavy based aluminum
ones and some with cork or rubber on the bottoms and a few plastic ones
and my FAVE of the cool ones, the WOODEN ones turned on lathes that look
real cool and seem to avoid most of the static problems... but can bust
depending on the grain of the wood when you really tap 'em hard or on
the edge...

This is really a weak topic for a thread, because if I just go out and buy
one and then toss it later, it will represent a much smaller waste of money
than most of the things I have in my tying kit. But just the same, whats the
scoop....do most of you advanced tyers use a stacker, or do you do it by
hand?

I don't know if I have the right responding to something where you're
asking for the opinions of an advanced tyer, I mean, advanced in years
maybe, and not even then compared to some of the folks out here... but
my advice would be to treat yourself to one, and if you don't like it,
give it to someone else.

If you're only wanting to buy one, and this is gonna sound weird to
people who know me, because I SELDOM EVER ENDORSE ANYTHING ORVI$... I'd
recommend the Orvi$ one with the see-thru window in the base... I
thought it was a joke when I saw it, but my brother bought it for me a
few Xmases ago, and it's nice and heavy, it's an adequate size and it
has a cork base, so it doesn't mar the oak table top when I tie in the
living room... and the see thru feature is kinda cool to see if the hair
is aligned without having to pull up the tube to check. I think it's
like $12-15, and what's that... a couple of shots of Chinaco?? =)

Larry