fly tying hooks

[Norm Frechette]

why do fly tying hooks get an odd number size designation?

example

tiemco 102y size 17

does the redditch scale shown in figure 4 still hold up today??

http://books.google.com/books?id=sV9v3o ... t&resnum=1

[Roy]

why do fly tying hooks get an odd number size designation?

example

tiemco 102y size 17

does the redditch scale shown in figure 4 still hold up today??

http://books.google.com/books?id=sV9v3o ... t&resnum=1

Norm, I cannot open the link.

Hook sizing is a nightmare.
To make life easy I have a Griffin hook/hackle gauge which I use to establish some kind of benchmark.
The hook gauge part lets me see what I am doing when transferring from one maker's scale to another.
As to odd-number designation, I would guess it is a marketing ploy to suggest conformity in an alternate and regular system. That should work in the absence of a standard.

The major pain in the posterior is ordering a few thousand hooks in a particular profile to find that they are in fact a real 12 instead of the 14's you needed.

I have gone to a shop to buy a particular hook, found them on the rack, same manufacturer, different brand, exactly the same hook, the new brand was labelling the 14 as a 16,
Glad I did not send someone else to pick them up!

The Redditch scale still stands as a useful benchmark when discussing hooks via the ether.

[tie2fish]

It's been my observation that not only do hooks vary in actual size vs labelled size from one brand to another, but sometimes even within the same package from the same so-called "quality" manufacturer.