Dawn asked:
My father is just starting to tie. I was hoping to find him a book that has information from a left handers point of view.
Any ideas?
Thanks Dawn
PS was directed to your site from Dr. T at Northwestern Health Sciences. She got me started and I passed it along to my dad.
Thanks Dawn
Great Question
Fly tying involves manipulation of thread and materials with both hands. When I have a beginner who has not tied before, and is left hand dominant, I have found it easier to teach them to tie right handed, just like you do. The coordination involved in tying involves both hands almost to an equal degree. The secret is convincing the student that there is no difference, because there really isn’t. This technique has been much more successful than trying to teach everything in reverse, from right hand dominant tiers. The teacher has to be to be able to tie left handed to effectively teach it, otherwise the student ends up more confused and frustrated than if they were self taught. If the student absolutely does not respond to this method, a book with step by step pictures of the flies will work fine. Left hand dominant people have had to figure out how to do things in reverse for a long time, since it is a right hand dominant society and most things are written from that point of view. Their brains are pretty good at figuring out the reverse of what they see, to achieve the task. Learning to tie flies is helped for most folks by watching someone else tie. No matter if you are right handed or left it is the nuance of the hand manipulations that written materials cannot duplicate that is very helpful to the beginner as well. Good Luck! Let me know how it turns out. It has always been a pleasure to work with Doctor T.
9 users commented in " “ASK ANDY” Left Handed Tiers "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackI tie lefthanded, and I think I do an OK job. I have never seen a book giving specific instructions in tying lefthanded flies, but most people can reverse the instructions in their own mind.
Andy, I agree with almost everythng in your response, but it distressed me to read that you try to teach lefties to tie righthanded. That sounds like my first grade teacher trying to get me to write with my right hand. Don’t do it. The leftie will make the translation if you let him do it.
And I have to gently protest your statement that left handed “people have had to figure out how to do things in reverse….” Who says that a world with 89% righthanded people has things “right” and the opposite is “in reverse” anyway? I have found that I can do many things just fine with my non-dominant hand, for which the majority has to engage their strong hand. For me, the choice is not between “right and left,” or “right and wrong,” but rather between “right and correct.”
Finally, regarding left handing fly tying, and this is a shameless personal plug, but also meant to be a service to Dawn and her father and to other serious fishers for trout, I would encourage a rereading of the short scientific essay “A Short History of a Contented Race” found in the Guest Author section of this website.
Thanks for the input Perry, I was hoping for a south paw response. I also received a comment sending me to Charlie Craven’s web site which is a great tying resource. Apparently he is left handed and is putting out a book. Take a look at his site, it is well done.
I cannot add a link in this section but here is the site. http://www.charliesflyboxinc.com/flybox/index.cfm
Perry
After reading and re-reading your comment and reading my response to Dawn’s question, these things came to mind;
First, I make the assumption that Dawn is looking for a way to teach, help teach or locate teaching materials to help her father learn to tie flies.
My response is based solely on my experience from teaching people to tie flies for the last 13, 14, years and not based on tying flies myself. I am self taught and continue to undergo constant enlightenment from books, videos and other tiers who have taught me new techniques. I suspect this process will end only when I make the choice to stop learning. At that point I hope to be swimming with the fishes anyhow. I welcome the opinion of others who enjoy tying as much as I do, because it enables me to learn more than I can on my own.
Second, my mistake is stating that there is a dominant hand in fly tying. “I hereby retract that statement” What my point was, is stated in my response, “ The coordination involved in fly tying involves both hands almost to an equal degree. I truly believe I can take the word “almost” out of that sentence. Which minimizes the dominant hand discussion.
Third, “reverse” is a bad word to use in this discussion(see statement above). You use it, and I use it to express the same thing, only there is a flaw. My first statements to any tying class are; “There are no rules” and “There are a million ways to achieve the same end goal, I am going to show you one way”. The rest is up to your creativity and reasoning skills that you develop based on the materials you are using.
Teaching fly tying, and tying flies on your own, are two very different subjects. Ultimately, if you continue to tie flies after taking classes, you teach yourself because you have an interest. Teachers plant seeds and give students ideas. It is then up to the students to make choices.
I have just started a new round of tying classes and I have a left hander in the class. I will let you know what they think.
I have a young, left-handed daughter interested tying, and I’ve been trying to teach myself how to do some operations left handed to show her. I’ve seen some references to converting vises to use left-handed, and I’m wondering if there are tools that are right or left hand specific – whip finishers etc. Videos of tying from a left-handed direction would be helpful – I haven’t found anything. Any other issues that have been encountered for folks tying left handed?
Thanks,
As a left handed tier, i didn’t find it difficult to learn.
Thanks Andy for the invite, I am happy to add my two cents, even if they turn out to be worth well less. LOL!
Contrary to popular belief, I am indeed right handed and write with my right hand as well as shoot and do most other things, EXCEPT for tying flies.
The first vise I got when I was a kid had a wingnut on the left side and I figured that it ought to be on my near side so I started right off tying left handed and tied for years before I realized that I was doing anything differently than others.
That being said, I teach most of my (right handed)new fly tying students to tie left handed, that is, working the thread with their left hand with the jaws of the vise facing left. Over the years of teaching classes I have discovered that so much of fly tying depends on the dexterity of the material hand rather than the thread hand that it just made more sense to give these more complicated tasks (like placing wings and tails and other delicate maneuvers) over to the dominant hand and leave the weak hand the sole task of wrapping and controlling the thread.
Of course, thread control is of paramount importance as well, but it simply is the easier of the tasks and is easy to pick up in the off hand. A nice side effect of wrapping the thread with the left hand is that the thread untwists as you wrap to create smooth thread bases and underbodies as opposed to the ridged effect resulting from the continuosly twisted thread that is wrapped with the right hand.
Andy mentioned above that he will typically teach a left handed tyer to tie right handed and that is exactly what I suggest, using the dominant hand to place materials and work the scissors and the weaker hand to work the thread. Now I just need to convince him and everyone else to teach right handers to tie lefty 😉
After all this, my book is set up with the right handed tyers point of view in all the pics (the pics were flipped to accomodate the rest of the world)although there is a sidebar discussing these exact points made above. My website photos however are all from the left handed tyers perspective and should be some help for both right and left handed tyers. Honestly, it amazes me how the brain will transpose what it needs to without you even noticing.
Sorry for the ramble, hope this helps,
Charlie
I agree with Mr. Craven that a left-handed fly tier should learn to tie right handed. I am militantly left-handed and do everything left-handed, except tie flies. Where I have struggled to learn other activities right handed and eventually given up, I believe it is actually easier for a lefty to learn to tie flies right handed. As stated above, the material hand (left) actually does the more difficult work than the thread hand (right). Good luck
I am a lefty who ties left handed. I tie left handed, because of Charlie’s book (looks like I still got it wrong…oops). But I do like tying left handed. I picked up the thread the first time with my right hand, but have since (as stated above) switched things around. All that to say, you can tie either way you want. What ever you feel comfortable doing is how you should tie. I understand it is easier for instructors to teach the same way they tie, but as a left-handed tier, I can say that I have never had any trouble figuring out how to tie from a righty. Anywho, just my two cents.
And yes, I know this thread is a year old. Haha!
A year or five years, your comment is important.
Thanks
Andy
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