The J Vice – A South African Success Story

By Ed Herbst

In the relatively small world of fly tying, the success of the JVice has been surprising.

Who would have thought that a South African engineer, working from his garage could produce a product that could challenge established names like Renzetti, Tiemco, Petitjean, Dynaking, C &F and others for innovation and engineering finish and quality?

Jay at his drill press - early days

Jay’s interest in engineering started as a child because his father, a farmer near Howick in Natal, did all the maintenance and repair on farm vehicles.  “From an early age, I started dismantling and repairing things mechanical, from water pumps to tractors and was taught by my father to use the machinery in the farm workshop,” Jay says. Later he studied electronics and then worked for Eskom for many years. He then became Technical Director for a door manufacturing company in Durban and headed a division that designed and built specialised production machines.

“All the skills gleaned during this time stood me in good stead when I started building my own vice,” Jay says.

Jay, Sterkfontein Dam

Jay had started fishing at an early age when his father took him shad fishing during their annual holidays to the Natal South Coast, but in 2001 he accompanied friends on a trip to the trout streams and dams of the Drakensberg mountains in Natal. Not only did the trip get him started on fly fishing and fly tying,  but it also led him to make his own vice because he felt that he could improve on the imported vice he had bought. The first one he made was quickly improved on in two subsequent versions.

“In October 2002 I booked to go on an Ufudu outing to Mtentu on the coast of the Eastern Cape with salt water guide, Ben Pretorius. – www.ufudu.co.za .

Jay at an Ufudu outing

“Ben was very impressed with my vice and asked me to produce more as he was looking for products manufactured in South Africa to add to his range of fishing gear. The vice had taken more than 40 hours to produce by hand and I told Ben he was crazy to even think along those lines as the vice would be too expensive.  Ben persisted and carried on nagging me until I eventually gave in and went to see a friend of mine who owned and ran a CNC workshop.

We made some changes to suit his machines and I had to dig deep to find the money to order the minimum batch of 50 sets of components.  A few weeks later I picked up the boxes of components and the first JVices were put together in November 2002. There were a few hiccups and the main stems were not to my liking and had to be remade to a new design. A deeper dig into my dwindling funds…

“In February 2003, Ben sold the first JVice to Dr Sakkie Bezuidenhout, a brain surgeon from Pretoria, who attended one of Ben’s Kosi Bay trips and, in the same month, sold two more. Things were looking up. By the end of that year 37 vices had been sold and the prospect of recovering my original investment no longer seemed remote.

“In September 2003 Gerard Barnardt of Cape Town (who had seen the JVice at an Ufudu Hookup meeting in Stellenbosch) kindly put me in touch with Hans Weilenmann, one of the world’s leading authorities on fly tying whose website, http://www.danica.com/flytier/, is essential reading for fly tiers. Hans was impressed and agreed to do a revue of the JVice in what is arguably the world’s leading English language fly fishing magazine, the American publication Flyfisherman.”

The Weilenmann revue was published, the first export order went to Peter Frailey from Carlisle, MA in the US. He has an interesting website, www.fishingwithflies.com. He was so impressed he did a revue on the JVice and placed it on his site. Since then export orders have been regular with three or four vices being sold abroad each month.

“In February 2002, I sold a vice to Capetonian, Ed Herbst, editor of the oldest fly fishing journal in the country www.piscator.co.za and probably the country’s leading authority on ultra light line fly fishing and micropatterns. This is where my troubles started because Ed wanted midge jaws and provided me with a lot of research on the features that would enhance the tying of small flies.

Midge jaws. The first prototype

Well, to cut a long story short and after about 12 prototypes and many sleepless nights, I finally came up with a workable solution.

Tying with my first prototype J Vice with midge jaws

“In March 2005, Loren Williams, a professional fly tyer and fly fishing guide based in New York State, contacted me for a vice. He had a set of specific design requirements that I agreed to produce for him and he described the finished product as his “perfect vice”. I incorporated all these changes in my production versions. Later that year Loren was chosen as the official fly tyer for the US fly fishing team and accompanied them to the 2005 World Championships in Sweden.  His website can be viewed at http://www.flyguysoutfitting.com/tyingtools.html. He did a great revue on his JVice which brought me further international publicity

“Because of the rising cost of components I decided to purchase a CNC lathe to enable in-house production of parts and to improve quality. The new machine arrived in early 2007 and, since installation in my garage, all parts are produced in-house. The new machine has enabled me to test new ideas and expedite research and development where, previously, such work took months and I had to do big minimum runs. The only problem is that the family cars now have to sleep outside!” Jay said.

Jay with his CNC vice – goodbye motorcars!

The JVice is receiving rave reviews from fly tyers all over the world. Each one is numbered and logged on Jay’s computer data base and he prefers to deal with customers individually rather than through dealers. This enables you to tailor the vice to your own needs and if you have any queries, Jay is just a mouse click or a telephone call away. Before ordering your vice you can discuss with him exactly what you want the final configuration of your vice to be. No other vice offers this degree of customisation to suit your individual needs.

Jay is constantly adding new features to his product and all of them will fit every model he has made.

In 2006 Jay booked a cottage on the farm Dwarsberg (www.trouthaven.co.za) where I was living at the time. It is about an hour’s drive from Cape Town and situated on the banks of the Holsloot stream. We fished together for two days and in the evening we tied flies. He showed me a prototype of his deer hair packer which I photographed. He said the idea had come to him in a restless night after he had spent a few hours tying Muddler Minnows. It significantly speeds up the stacking of deer hair and is now an established accessory in a wide range which includes an integral dubbing brush maker that fits to the base of the vice.

Jay’s deer hair packer

After several prototypes, he is now putting the final touches to a foam base as an alternative to the wooden base on the standard version. “I had a lot or requests for a lighter base from customers who take their vices with them when they fly to overseas fishing destinations. I am now also making a hand vice which is even lighter. I am also working on a self-sealing varnish bottle that will fit into the compartments on the vice base,” Jay said.

The J Vice with a foam base

Dubbing spinner

Camera clamp attachment (optional)

The details can be found on Jay’s website, www.jvice.co.za.

The vice with a C-Clamp and bobbin rest sells for R2080 (vat included), less than the price of equivalent imported models, but Jay recommends buying the R2990 (vat included) kit which includes the extension arm, waste basket, gallows tool and oak base – although the purchaser can specify other types of wood as well. This comes in a cordura nylon travel bag that incorporates pockets for tying tools, as well as holding the tying station, vice and accessories.

“Freight charges drive up the costs of imported vices”, says Jay “but, besides that, there is no other vice on the market which offers as many accessories or the versatility of the J Vice. My customers in Cape Town, for example, will fish for trout in tiny mountain streams on Saturday and on Sunday they will be fishing for tunny, Mako Shark and snoek thirty kilometres south of Cape Point. The JVice offers midge jaws suitable for tying flies half the size of your little finger nail, the standard jaws will tie deep-sea flies as long as your fore-arm and there is a new Pro Jaw which is an all round jaw and holds everything from 6/0 to # 22 and smaller. Whether you fish for trout in a tiny mountain stream like the Elandspad near Paarl,  for Leerfish in the estuary in Port Elizabeth, or for yellowfish in  the Vaal River near Parys, the J Vice will enable you to tie flies suitable for your local conditions”, Jay said.

The benefit which the JVice has over imported vices is that it is constantly evolving as he gets new ideas or input from fly tyers – many of them professionals – from all over the world and that each new accessory will fit the vice you have bought. With the exception of the Norlander, I have owned or tied on most of the top-of-the-range vices including the Law. None of them is as versatile or offers the range of accessories that the JVice does. Other benefits include the oak base that enables laptop tying while comfortably seated on a deckchair at a campsite or cottage which seldom have suitable tying tables. The Goose Neck design allows the hand to get in behind the fly and with the hand in this position holding material in place the jaws can be rotated approximately 180 degrees to get a better view of things.

Jay Smit, as chairman of Durban Fly Tyers, presents the Jack Blackman Trophy for the junior fly tyer of the year to Christian Calliontzis during the club's 2010 AGM.

Jay says that he has derived so much pleasure from fly fishing and fly tying that he feels that he has to put something back and he does that as chairman of the Durban Fly Tyers (http://www.durbanflytyers.co.za/ which regularly hosts fly tying evenings and demonstrations and fishing trips for members.

Jiri Klima ties a Czech Nymph on Ed Herbst's Jvice while on a trip to South Africa. Looking on are Giordano "Zamps" Zamparini and Karel Krivanec. Jiri was suitably impressed!

To contact Jay

Telephone +27(0) 832508211 or email him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or www.jayvice.co.za 

Final word – Tom Sutcliffe

Any story from Ed Herbst is complete to every last detail, well informed and a pleasure to read. This article on an outstanding person, and his equally outstanding vice, is no exception. It’s Herbst at his unmatchable best and it also drove me to take a long, hard look at the J Vice. I felt a warm wave of that proud-to-be-a-South African emotion sweep over me when I finally sat down to really study the product. It was a month or two back – this story has been a while in reaching my website, but I won’t bore you with the reasons why.

Mark Krige using his J Vice

I was photographing Mark Krige tying Phillip Meyer’s Halo-hackle RAB Variant and there were two Jays on the tying table at Phillip’s Eikendal fly shop. The vice is engineering’s equivalent of a work of art, extremely attractive, but also intuitively designed so it’s optimally user friendly, even if that term’s a little tired and clichéd. I thought in future Jay’s logo might safely read, ’Designed and made by a fly tyer for fly tyers.’ That says a lot. We fly tiers are a fussy bunch, in case you hadn’t noticed.