Some 8-10 years have passed since I became interested in tying classic Atlantic salmon flies.

Looking back on those early days of my interest, my immediate thoughts fall on the difficulties associated with procuring materials; not just some of the genuine and very rare materials, but any material - even good substitutes.

To you guys and gals - the readers of the Flyer - who are all (but a few) Americans, it might seem amusing, but in Europe you couldn't get anything in those days! It took me a great deal of time to get hold of my first genuine pair of black barred woodduck - not to mention the price: the equivalence of 4-5 US$ per pair - yeerkk! !

Today the demand for such materials have brought forth a lot of quality stuff and although prices have gone through the roof thanks Henrik ! to the fact that we are all - more or less -a greedy bunch of material stowers, you can at lest get hold of the stuff. Looking back at these first years in tying classic flies I now realize that I too got possessed by collecting and stowing away - even though I had or have materials for many years of tying it just never seemed to be enough, I became immune to prices. How many people (except for the guys you know on the FLYER roster) do you know of that are prepared to pay 300$ for one lousy pair of feathers?

If you are possessed by original materials anything can be had if you are willing to pay the price for it. As time passed and my collection grew, I realized that something was missing: Hooks! The blind eye salmon iron is the backbone of the classic fully dressed salmon fly - without it you can forget about your nice materials!!

At the time when I started no such hooks were available on the market - or at least that I knew of. Some fly tyers and among them many Scandinavians had the habit. of buying up old antique flies and stripping them for the blind eye hook. In my opinion a VERY sickening idea!! These old flies constitute a heritage which we are obliged to protect, no matter the material state of these flies.

Then during a visit to the Partridge of Redditch factory in England I saw a series of blind eye hooks type Adlington & Hutchinson which they had just started to produce. My eyes went wild and I immediately bought up a large stock - a stock that would last me well into the 21. century! No offence to Partridge - the hooks were essentially OK and did well for a couple of years until they were more or less thrown out - sorry Alan!

However, as my interest in tying these flies grew and 1 really got into correspondence with tyers from the US I found out that there were a few dedicated guys who manufactured hand made hooks for a small but growing group of seriously interested fly tyers. It didn't take long to track and get through to some of these and eventually I did get hold of some very nice contemporary hand made hooks - hooks of a very high quality.

Amateur hook makers such as Ray Smith and Eugene Sunday are already "legends" of the craft and have become known also here in Denmark . Contemporary Hand made blind eye salmon irons are characterized by their beautiful styles and characteristics - very fine reproductions of well known antique hooks of different make and origin. Because of this and the ever increasing demand the prizes are naturally of course quite high, around 10$ per hook. A prize that can be accepted, but as they were retailed in Denmark by a certain retailer who felt he should profit even more, they were sold for somewhere between 20 and 40$, making them accessible to only a handful of very dedicated ($$$) tyers! Because of these circumstances one question eventually forms in your mind: What can these guys do that I can't do - and furthermore at 10 bucks a piece?

That's exactly the thought that struck me. At the same time I was corresponding with Mark Kirchner of California, who as some of you maybe know, is a very competent but non-commercial hook maker. Mark suggested that I started making my own hooks and wrote me page upon page on do-it-yourself hook-making. Mark even sent me a two hour cassette tape on the A-Z of hook making!!

To begin with I must convince my fellows in the art of fly tying that the art of hook making requires no skills what so ever. In essence there are only two (minor) real problems that must be overcome : Where do you get the right steel or thread and how do you cut the barb?

Since long I have learned that most, if not all, of the contemporary hook makers in the US and elsewhere don't really produce hooks from scratch it- they reshape from existing hooks. That's also what Mark taught me in the beginning, but I wanted to make hooks all the way! So, if you want to stick to reshaping write me or Mark (which I am shure Mark won't mind) for a copy of the "A-Z on hook-making" auto tape and stop reading here. If on the other hand you want to start from scratch as I did then: Let's get to it!

Hooks are traditionally made out of carbon steel wire or thread, although some (O'Shaugnessy was the most famous) were filed from stock bars. At the extreme, an intermediary hook of oval wire was patented by Hardy of Alnwick early in the 20th. century. Don't stick to bothering about carbon percentages; whether it's one or the other doesn't really matter as long as you don't need the hooks for fishing and thus need to harden and temper for maximum breaking strength. You need temper-able steel, and as far as I know that's a carbon of around 60 %. Carbon steel wire can be procured in virtually all kinds of diameters, but a range of diameters between 0.8 and 1.70 millimeters will cover hook sizes from 4 up to 7/0. Don't know what wire to use for what size? Take a look on the back of a pack of Partridge hooks and you will find some valuable information to start on.

Bearding or barbing can be difficult to do in the beginning. To be able to do this consistently you will eventually need a specialized tool, but mind you: it doesn't necessarily have to be a real sophisticated tool. Essentially all it must be able to do is "slice" into the thread or wire without breaking or "chipping". A chisel or knife can easily be made out of hard tool steel - the best thing you can do is customize an old metal file or heavy duty saw blade. In the beginning I started with a simple tool makers chisel set into a wooden block by a slight angle. As I have a very short patience with stone-age type tools, I asked a friend and fellow fly fisher who is also a tool maker to try and design the same kind of tool in steel. Eventually he came up with the "barbing tool" which to date have produced some 1000 barbs with virtually no problems. Then a couple of years ago at the Fly Show in Elverum, Norway, I saw a Mustad hook maker produce hooks on some of Mustads antique machinery. The bearding knife they had, which dated back almost a hundred years, was much easier to use, so I took some "spy" photographs of it. At the time of writing my tool maker is working on a copy of this particular instrument.

The most important thing to keep in mind when working on a bearding tool or knife is the angle of the knife or chisel to the thread or wire, as well as the angle of the blade. These angle has to be custom fitted to the individual tool to produce the right "bite" thus producing a barb and not a peal like when you peal a potato. REMEMBER that any cutting problem will eventually stem from a misfit of one or both of these angles and not from the material, tool, etc. A particular problem during barbing, is the formation of a "curly" barb. Gary Kaplan of San Francisco, being a "retired" furniture maker, taught me that the cutting of the barb in steel wire is no different from planing a piece of wood. My curly barbs were converted to straight even barbs by hollowing the blade thus preventing the barb to curl of against the blade when the blade reaches deep.

Some terminology: (Correct me if I am wrong) The point of the hook is the part that protrudes forward from the shoulder of the barb (see Figure 1). The spear is somewhat more obscure, but essentially the lower or outer part where the bend comes up to the barb including the barb and point.

In my opinion the point or more important the spear is the soul of the hook. The spear gives the hook it's final character - a bad spear, a bad hook! Modern hooks are ALL machine filed (no matter how "handmade" the makers may say they are), therefore the point can only be either rounded (like Partridges) or triangular knife edged (like Mustads new 80000 series).In the old days all hooks were hand filed, mostly half oval, that is - only the top and sides were filed, never the keel. So it was written - so it shall be done!

When the point has been filed on the sides to produce a sharp point and bent into shape you start filing the top or saddle. I have found that at this point people find their own style and method to suit them and the results they want to achieve. The trick is to develop a routine and remember this routine for all your filing. I use only a fine round watch makers file without handle to file from now on. Start by planing the neck or protrusion of the barb so that there is no levelling or border between this and the flat of the sides. Take it easy on the top, because you will soon have overdone it! Always file from the barb towards the point and angle the file so that you file down on the sides. When you have produced a "rough" point take a look at the result, the length is important, you might want to compare it with a hook you want to reproduce. Don't leave the top of the barb unfiled - try to create a perfect saddle, that is a continuous flat S-curve from top of the barb all the way to the point. It takes some time and practise to get the feeling - and a couple of dozens to get the same product every time, but as soon as it becomes routine you should be able to repeat the same point over and over again. When the spear has reached a point of satisfaction I prefer to polish it with fine polishing/sanding paper (the diamond kind) or a small Carborundum-rubber polishing wheel fitted on an electric drill. Look for small plier pinch marks etc. These don't look good after the final paint is on!

If you study old antique hooks you will notice that on many or most the cut behind the barb has been extended unto the sides of the point. In fact I have noticed that this detail rarely applies to both sides but mostly to the right side. This was probably dependent on whether the filer/maker was right or left handed. This effect is one of the very sought after qualities in contemporary classic hooks and you probably like it too. The effect can be attained by cutting from under the barb and out and down unto the sides of the barb with a knife or sharp one edged file. I use a very sharp pyramid shaped file where only the base has a filing surface. Such can be easily bought but often need a little custom sharpening on a grinding machine. It is important to get all the way in behind the barb so that the cut becomes a natural part of the cut of the barb. Be careful, only one or two strokes with the file will produce the wanted effect.

The shank tapering can be filed on a machine or sanding bench. I used to round it down, but I rather like to taper the underside to get a flat seating for the gut loop ends (see Fig. 3). You may also cut a few cuts across the shank for extra gut loop holding power.

There is much reading to be had on hooks and different shapes of hooks in books, catalogs etc. At the end of this article the reader will find reference to some of the most interesting sources. Today as well as in the old days there is a wide variety of different designs available and as it will be possible to explain just a little bit about the subject here I will stick to one design only: the Limerick style of bend.

In my opinion THE classic salmon fly hook is per definition the Limerick hook. Take a look at the hook plates/photos in Taverners book. Tell me of someone who can explain exactly what a Limerick hook looks like and I'll give him 100 bucks without blinking! YES - it is a good question! Figure 1. shows two hooks - a traditional antique Limerick together with the modern Limerick we know today.

The only certain thing we can say about the name Limerick is that it's a town in Ireland! Limerick is also the term or name for a particular hook type or bend design, not a particular maker or product. In short and rough terms the Limerick hook style is characterized by a bend that follows an almost exponential curve from where the bend starts at some point behind the barb to where it becomes the straight shank. Most modern limerick hooks have a straight spear from the point all the way back to the back of the hook - where the bend starts to curve upwards. In classic Limericks the bend from the shank side becomes a circular bend which again curves the point upwards and in towards the shank. The transition from bend into shank could be very long (so-called hog backs). Contrary to what most people think, the weakest point of the hook is just at the point where the curve of the bend enters the shank. The hog back type Limericks were extremely strong because the transition between the curve of the bend and the shank is almost non-existing, thus distributing the pressure over as large a surface as possible. That is why the modern Bartleet type hooks are actually much stronger than the thin, light wire immediately leads you to believe.

The bending of the hook is in principle quite easy. In the old days the hook makers or needle factories used to send out the pointed and filed pins to families in town, where the kids would then sit and bend the pins into shaped and half finished hooks. To be able to do the same job you actually only need a pair of pliers. Pliers have a great disadvantage though, you can not bend the wire with pliers without leaving the bend full of nicks and marks. Often you can see angles in a bend that should be curving and that looks bad.

The tool that was used back then was a simple preshaped piece of flat steel or iron plate set into a wooden block together with a small pin to direct the position of the barb and hold the wire while bending. In modern hook making this tool - the template - consists of a steel block cut to shape that may bend from 1 to as much as 100 hooks at a time.

I use such a template cut and filed into shape out of a block of aluminium bar stock (see Fig. 4). The advantage of using this method compared to bending a flat piece of steel into shape and trying to center it in a wooden block is obvious. Using an aluminium block gives you the advantage of being able to file on and on until you reach the right shape. Often you need to over bend the wire to get the exact hook shape - depending on the hardness of the wire you use; this is the only trouble you will encounter, but nevertheless it can be quite time consuming. No advice can be offered because we will never use the same steel - so just keep filing! Eventually you will learn that the "overbend" will be most apparent from the last part of the bend through to the shank. Oh, just one little piece of advice: If you move to a new wire stock or different maker, the softness of the wire will be different - and so, you'll have start all over again with filing templates!

The template is fastened to a wooden or iron block together with a small steering pin to direct and hold the point while bending. This pin must be placed in an exact and fixed position under the point. Lots of experience have taught me that the position of the steering pin is THE critical factor that will in the end determine the final shape of the hook and the direction of the point.As soon as you have a rough template that you want to continue with you should there-fore fasten it in a fixed position on the block with the pin fixed in position as well. If you don't do this you will eventually end up filing in a whole lot of different places on the template, never really getting the right result simply because you move the pin around. If you are smart, you fix the pin on a rotating screw so that you can move it a few millimeters back and forth as well as up and down, by doing so you get the opportunity to be able to create different hook shapes on the same template! Finally remember that you may adjust the bend of the finished hook with a pair of pliers, but be careful and use the kind that has nylon jaws that don't make marks!

Essentially now the hook is finished and needs only to receive it's final strength through hardening and tempering followed by a coat of finish. Before applying heat to the hook it's a good idea to degrease in some form because any grease on the steel will burn and leave black shells on the surface that can be time consuming to remove.

Before divulging into the science of hardening you should know that unless you need strong fishable hooks it doesn't really matter much with critical temperatures. The hardening process itself means heating the steel until reaching its critical temperature followed by rapid cooling. The critical temperature is dependent on the composition and the carbon content of the steel. It can be found in two ways. One is by holding a small magnet to the steel while heating. As soon as the hook reaches a point where there is no magnetic adherence or attraction the critical temperature has been reached. This is the rather inconvenient approach. The second way is to know the hardening color of your type of steel and then judge the heating and temperature by the color changes of the hook. Most temper-able carbon steels will harden somewhere around 800 - 1000 degrees Celsius corresponding to the colors blood red to medium orange. Upon reaching the desired temperature or color, quickly submerge the hook into ice water or cooled oil. It should be of little importance what cooling agent you use, but I advice you to use oil since I have seen some problems with tempering after cooling in water. Oil has the advantage that it will penetrate the steel to some degree and therefore protect the hook later. In general ice water produces the most hard as well as most brittle hardening. Oils produce softer hardenings.

Having heated the hook to extreme temperature and maybe submerged it in oil or water you need to perform a final degreasing before you venture into lacquering or japanning the hook. First remove the coal shell from the hook by a light polish with fine soft sanding paper or steel wool - I prefer steel wool, because it gets into the corners, but it tends to stick to your fingers and create a one week itch all over your hands! I keep returning to the smart stuff, so here's another: Make yourself a small barrel 10 x 5 inches and join it to a small toy engine for rotation. Fill it half up with fine sand and rotate the hooks in it for half a day - they come out as polished silverware! Then remove the last grease by use of acid. I use concentrated phosphoric acid which is a very powerful acid, so mind you it works just as fine on exposed skin as it does on steel! The acid removes grease and at the same time it created a rough surface (not visible to the human eye) that helps bind the paint that will be applied later. Acid treatment time varies with concentration of acid and thickness of wire but by using the concentrated acid I seldom treat large hooks for more than 20 minutes, the process is easy to follow. From now on DO NOT TOUCH the hook with anything like greasy fingers!!

Following hardening and acid treatment the hook is brittle and will break if bent or dropped on a hard floor. To achieve the right softness or strength the hook has to be tempered. This is usually (again depending on the type of steel etc.) achieved by heating to approximately 250-280 degrees Celsius which can be done in a normal household oven. I temper at 250 degrees followed by a slow cool-down. During tempering the hook should achieve a bluish to brown-yellow color - this was the final color of older antique hooks that were not japanned.

The paint, lacquer or black Japanning protects the hook from rust and produces a desired finish. Japanning is a term used for applying a special black lacquer to metal or hooks (or other items). Today no hook factory uses the same method and we can not expect them to reveal their secrets.To achieve the point of having a perfect finish for hooks is somewhat of a challenge and it is still one of the details upon which I have not been able to produce a fully satisfactory result.

The method of black Japanning originated from Japan. Originally the black lacquered surfaces were produced with the raw sap from the trunk of the lacquer tree of Manchuria. This semi-milky sap has a colorless, transparent and almost opaque color that is easily blended with a fine powder to produce a colored substance. This lacquer produces extremely beautiful and long lasting surfaces achieved through numerous coats only. It has many disadvantages (but as the Japanese Zen artists were born sufferers, no problem was too big to overcome), first it was EXTREMELY hazardous to your health and second: it took weeks if not months to dry. If this lacquer was needed for cane rods I can assure you that Garrison and Payne wouldn't have been in business, ever! The drying process - in between each coat - took place in the only dust free environment known to nature: at sea! The artist or craftsmen bore their products on board fishing vessels which were bound for weeks of fishing far from land, while they worked as deck hands. A properly lacquered box without chips in the surface can sell for as much as several hundred thousand dollars today.

Later, in the 19th. century, copies of this lacquer became popular and was used for black Japanning of all kinds of stuff from motor engines to fly boxes and hooks. All these lacquers or varnishes were complicated natural mixtures on a turpentine base; un-reproducible today unless you come across the archives of a 19th. century paint or varnish factory! A friendly call to Partidge of Redditch production manager Terry Emms revealed that the old recipe for black Japanning had long since been lost and that today's modern hooks are black "Japanned" with common black stoving enamels.

The hard part in painting hooks is getting the paint - let's call it varnish from now on! - to stay on the steel. NO varnish (except epoxy) will do so on a smooth or polished surface. That's where the phosphoric acid treatment comes in. So far I have come up with a handful of varnishes (actually paint!) that produces good results. There is no point in mentioning the names here because they are not available in the US. However they are all spray can paints that are heat resistant up to around 500 degrees Celsius. Because of the heat resistance you can then harden the coat by re-tempering the hook. Be shure to do this at a lower temperature than the one you used for tempering. A US suggestion regarding a good coat is to use the brand Rustoleum which was recommended to me by Mark Kirchner, I have no experience with it myself as it can not be bought in Europe, but judging from Marks hooks it looks and feels good.

That concludes my story on hook making. I can only recommend any salmon fly tyer to try it out, it is not as difficult as it sounds! As long as you use a rational approach you may eventually solve any little problem that comes along, else revert to conferring with any of the growing number of fly tyers who is into this as deep as you are.

Finally here is a list of books or catalogs with plates of different hooks and styles.

Taverner, E.: "Salmon Fishing", (1932).
Ephemera: "Book of the Salmon", (1850).
Francis, F.: " Book on Angling", (1867).
Francis, F.:" Book on Angling", (1920, revised, new intro. by Maxwell, new hook plate).
Maxwel, Sir H. :"Salmon and Sea Trout",
(1898). Kelson, G. M.: "The Salmon Fly",
(1895). Sandeman, F.: "By Hook and by Crook", (1893).
Brown, J.: "Angling in North America", var. (4th. edition, 1860's is much enlarged).