Auto Bobbin

I agree with Lee that there is a leraning curve; but at the end of the curve there is a pot of gold. This bobbin resolves all the problems associated with winding extra thread back onto the spool before you can finish the fly. No matter how fast you tie, this bobbin will increase your speed and accuracy. Loading the Nor Vise bobbin is a breeze ( I use a drill which works great; with no additional twist in the thread; which was my first concern.) All around great bobbin. When you first get the bobbin; take some thread you never use and a large hook and spend an hour or so just playing with it. You will find out in no time that you will have it mastered.

I just received my Nor-Vise bobbin this week and used it for the first time. I definitely concur with the other two reviews that there is a learning curve. On the positive side the rewinding feature is really great and makes it very easy to adjust your thread length. Even though I am very inexperienced with the bobbin I found I could apply thread very fast. As mentioned if you forget to hold the thread when you cut then it rewinds back on the spool. With experience I am confident this will become a favored tool.

I love this bobbin as I can easily adjust thread length while working without manually rotating the spool as with ordinary bobbins. Also, it fits my hand comfortably. However, there is a significant learning curve in using this bobbin to say nothing of the fact that you need to rewind your threads on Norm's spools which aren't cheap. While threading is no more difficult than a normal bobbin, winding the thread around one of the arms to get the right tension is difficult. Also, when you cut the thread, you need to hold on to the spool so the thread doesn't automaticaly rewind back onto the spool. This also makes storing the bobbins difficult; if you just invert it in some holder, the thread will rewind. On the Nor-vise setup there's a rubber lugs on the thread post so you can secure the thread end and thereby avoid it automatically rewinding. However, storing more than two bobbins at a time on this post is impracticle.

The bottom line is that I just bought 10 more spools on which to wind thread so one can summize that I really like this product. However, it has it's drawbacks that people should understand before buying. Regardless, you'll still use some conventional bobbins for infrequently used threads but for black, olive, brown, etc. the Automatic Bobbin is a better way to go.