Recently we saw this fly pop up on our Instagram and Facebook newsfeeds and we just had to find out more. We reached out to Sven Diesel to dig a little deeper into his LEGO fly…
A recent post was sent to me where a tyer was voicing his opinion about the creativity of fly tying these days and used a photo of some Duplo and a hook to make a point. I agree fully with what this tyer was voicing and respect his opinion. Later that weekend as I was building some legos with my kids I had a thought come across my mind of a Lego fly. After chatting with a good friend Pete Rosenau about it, he said if someone could do it, it would be me. So as the Mountain Dew settled in and the hours of the early morning set in, I sat at my dining room table with our “random pieces” Lego bin with a few ideas of what I wanted to create.
I quickly discovered that I had a lot of charcoal grey pieces in the flat sizes and realized quickly that I could do an Adams Parachute. After attempting several times to secure the legos to the hook I was about to resort to either gluing them to the shank or building the body and then heating the hook and simply burning the legos onto the hook. Then I found the magical piece that slid almost perfectly over the eye. This piece was the key element to building the body. Once I had the body built using the grey flat pieces in the photo, to hold it all together without glue I had to heat the hook at the bend and melt the 1 x 2 flat grey so it was notched and would keep the whole body from spinning. Glue Free was the goal. The body was done. Now the tail and the Feathers and post to worry about.
I tried to use some airplane propellers to replicate the hackle but it looked way to sparse. Similar to my first ever parachute where I wrapped twice and thought I was done. This would not due. I found that I had some wheel parts and noticed the groove in-between the outsides and thought to insert some sort of sword or weapon and how cool that would be. Then I realized if I used all the pirate swords or shooters my kids would kill me. Then a 1 x 2 grate piece fell on the floor as I was shuffling trying to find other pieces that would work. It almost fit in the groove perfectly. I grabbed a lighter, hit the end for a second so it caught on fire, blew it out then inserted it into the groove and it stayed. Perfect. I found all the great pieces I had in brown, grey and white to replicate the colors used on the Adams parachute of Brown and Grizzly Hackle. I found that I had to cut the corner of the Grate piece to get more Grates in, but repeated the process as before. One layer didn’t look very dense as the fly looks, so I resorted to gluing the grates on top and on the bottom of the middle layer of hackle. A little glue had to be used. I had a few Grates left over and figured they would make a nice tail and cut a white grate diagonally and glued it to the grey grate, then lit a grey grate on fire and placed it on top of it all. Then snapped it in place along with the replicated hackle. The last piece was easy. A white cylinder.
I put it together, took it apart, and put it back together again. I have done this probably 4 or 5 times now and know that it is something that someone could easily replicate themselves. I know that it is not considered fly tying, but it was a lot of fun. Seeing my Lego Loving boys faces when I showed them was awesome. It proves that you can create anything, whether using Legos, fly-tying materials, or stuff you find at the craft store. The key is that without the foundation of tying and having tied a bunch of these patterns, I wouldn’t have been able to do this.
Be sure to follow Mr. Erik Svendsen Svend Diesel on Instagram @svendiesel, and see what he’s whipping up next!
