As much as I truly love the fly fishing arena, as a guy who likes to ask “why do we do it that way?” or “why is (insert tool/gear/toy here) designed this way?”, there’s not been a lot of truly out of the box thinking in the way we approach certain things – like how we tie flies – in some time. Sure, there’s lots of tweaking around the edges, there’s a boatload of synthetics to use in tying these days, and vises have come a long, long way from the Thompson Model A days – but the elemental design of the vise on your desk is mechanically similar to the Thompson buried somewhere in my (and maybe your) gear box.
20+ years ago, a guy named Norm Norlander did some truly out of the box thinking and came up with the Norvise; I actually met Norm one rainy spring day in SLC when he was on the road doing tying demonstrations in the early Norvise days. He was a soft-spoken, bespectacled guy who had indeed invented a true rotary vise different than anything in the game. (And yeah, I bought one, then the larger size for tying salt water flies – and still use them today.)
Sadly Norm passed last Sunday the 13th at his home in Kelso, WA after a short battle with cancer; tip your hat and raise a glass to one of the true innovators in the industry. May there be more to come.
