The Fly-Tying Vise?

On Fri, 5 May 2006 07:12:02 -0700, "Tom Nakashima"
wrote:

I'm going to start with the vise.

If plan to buy right away, and there's a budget to be considered, a
Thompson A, which can be had for well under $50.00USD (used, in good
condition would be fine, IMO - check eBay - there was pile o' stuff
someone had on eBay and posted to ROFF some time back that had a
Herter's/Thompson in it - anyone know the hammer price?). If you buy an
offshore copy, I'd be careful as far as return privileges or get "hands
on" with it before purchase. As far as commercially-assembled kits, I'd
stay away unless you _know_ you can use a good bit of the contents, as
many are full of stuff _no one_ really uses much, if at all, and you pay
for it all.

Then, I'd get some "hands-on" experience with the myriad others out
there. Vises are like fly rods - ask 100 people and you'll get 112
answers and 203 "well, it depends." Well, maybe not QUITE that bad, but
there are enough options and opinions on those options out there to make
it pretty much a "whatever YOU like" type of thing. I'd not recommend
starting out with one of the more expensive models unless money really
is no object, for two reasons: one, there's no way to know if you'll
even like tying, and two, there is enough differences in the choices so
that you may well end up wanting a different style/model/brand. As to
the pure "quality" aspect, most, if not all, of the 100.00USD-plus ones
that I know of are of good quality.

TC,
R