DaHo Instructional and Educational Materials
This page includes instructional and educational materials about how to use our DaHo hollow spectra needle tools
These are helpful hints that can assist you in doing many of the basic tasks that are required in using hollow spectra needle tools. They are discussed here, in detail, so that all of the procedures that use these basic tasks can just reference them in their instructions.
1. Starting a needle in the end of your hollow spectra line
2. Inserting a needle into the side of the line
3. Feeding the needle inside the hollow center of the spectra line
4. Hollow spectra line and needle sizes
5. Threading needle and mono/fluoro line sizes
6. Straightening out DaHo Needles
1. Starting a needle in the end of your hollow spectra line – One of the more ‘challenging’ tasks, at first, can be to initially insert the point of your needle into the middle, hollow section of your spectra line. The spectra line is usually fuzzy at the end and will flatten out when any pressure is put on it, making the center hollow chamber of the braid difficult to find.
The recommended place to work with your needles is on the edge of a table or other flat surface. Put the line on the top of the table, straight for a foot or so, and place the end of the line at the edge of the table. This position gives you the ability to position the needle in the right position so it appears that it is extending from the line’s position.
You need to use the point of your needle, the smaller the better for this purpose at first, to find the center of the spectra line. Once you have found the hollow center of the braid, the outer part of the line should look consistent in color and texture, and your needle should go up inside the spectra line easily, depending upon the outer size of the needle and the size/weight of the line. Below is a threading needle inserted into the end of the hollow spectra line. If the picture resolution was better, you could see that the spectra with the needle in it is the same color and texture of the braid.
If your needle point keeps going through the line or you can see the needle being exposed through the line material in a non-consistent manner, your needle is not in the hollow center section of the line. Try and repoint the needle toward the center of the spectra line when trying to insert it, will help find the open braid center.
Trying to make the end of the spectra line more round can also help. Sometimes a little twirling action on the needle will also help it find the center of the braid. If you think the end of the spectra line has been abused too much, cut off an inch or so and reposition the line at the edge of the table and try again.
It really very simple to do once you have the hang of it.
2. Inserting a needle into the side of the line – Many procedures require you to insert your needle into the side of your hollow spectra line. In this task, you also are looking for the hollow center of the braid as when you are starting at the line’s end. But in this task, you must start the insertion of the needle point at a 45% angle to the spectra line. In the following picture, you can see how this is done.
The best way to do this task, is to hold a 1″ section of your spectra line, where you want to insert your needle, down on the table top with your fingers. Then, insert the needle point into the spectra line and stop before the point hits the table surface. Start bringing the angle of the needle down towards the line while searching for the line’s hollow center. Once the needle tip is in the hollow spectra line, you now have to find the center of the braid. A good way of doing this is to hold the line down on a table surface about 1/4″ in front of where the needle tip entered the line. Then, using the inserted point of the needle, lift up the line a little while it is bunching up, searching for the center.
As with the end entry method, once you have found the hollow center channel, your needle will start going up the line and it will also be a consistent size and texture.
3. Feeding the needle inside the hollow center of the spectra line – Regardless of how you started your needle into the hollow center braid of the spectra line, feeding the needle and its attached contents, if any, is done the same way. You always want the line stretched out straight, at least a foot or more if possible, on a table or other surface in front of the needle. Sit with the needle in hand, pointed at the place the line comes off of the surface about 6 inches away.
Thread the line onto the needle, keeping the needle in the same straight line as the spectra line being pulled off of the table surface. The shape of the needle point will keep the needle in the spectra line’s hollow braided middle as long as the needle and line are kept in a straight line.
Pull the line over the needle, from the point down a few inches on the needle. You will develop a process with your hands to pull the line onto the needle with one set of fingers, and hold it on the needle with the other hand until it bunches up on the back part of the needle.
When this happens, hold the needle and surrounding line close to the point, and reaching toward the back of the needle, slide the bunched up line off the needle and down any attached lines, being careful not to put too much pressure on any attached lines that could release them from the needle.
You can continue in this manner until you have gone as far as needed to complete the task. When you are at that point, you just reach up and hold the line in from of the needle point, fold it over and push the needle point out of the spectra line. After the needle is removed, usually along with any attached line ends. The spectra line being threaded, will have no ill effects from the process. Below you can see a threading needle being removed from the center of a spectra line.
4. Hollow spectra line and needle sizes – The middle of each size/weight of hollow spectra line is only so big. We have attached our recommendations of applicable spectra line sizes for each of our needle products on our Product Offerings page. If your needle is very difficult to thread inside of your hollow spectra line, you may want to recheck our line sizes.
Our needle should go up the specified size/weight of the spectra lines we specified with our products. But, all brands of hollow spectra line products are not exactly the same size. Also, each person using our needles, may have different perceptions of what does, and does not, work right.
If your needle feels tight while threading it in the spectra, and think the needle you are using is too large for your spectra line, you might try to first run an appropriately sized loop splicing needle up the line to ‘open up’ the line. This opens up the line’s braid structure a little, so that a larger needle can comfortably fit into the line. Instructions for opening up your hollow spectra line are included on this page. Return to the menu and you will find them.
5. Threading needles and mono/fluoro line sizes – All of our threading needles are made from 304 Stainless Steel hypodermic tubing. The industry standard variance of the IDs of these tubes is up to .002″ due to the manufacturing process. We make every attempt to ensure that our threading needles match our published specifications. But, in some cases, our needles may be slightly smaller than our specifications, as new needle orders arrive from our supplier.
As a general rule, please try to select a threading needle that is .002″, or more larger, than the size of your mono/fluoro line. It will be a lot easier to use as it is very difficult to fit an exact size match of line into any needle.
We have created an spreadsheet that has pages for both mono and fluoro lines. We have two different options for you to use. Each of the line types (Mono and Fluoro) are on separate pages on the spreadsheet. We will keep adding new lines as new data becomes available.
The first and preferred way to view this data is with our PDF File Version. If you have an industry standard Adobe PDF viewer add-in installed in your web browser, it will bring both pages of the data as a web page. You can scroll up and down to view all the available data and can expand and reduce the size of the data for easier reading. And, when you are done, you can just hit the back button to return to this page. For the PDF version push here.
If you do not have a PDF viewer on your computer, but do have Microsoft Excel, you can select the Excel Version and can either bring the file into Excel on your computer, or download the Excel file for local viewing. On the Excel version, you can select the line type on the page tab in the lower left corner of the window. This spreadsheet has a page for each line type – Mono and Fluorocarbon. For the Excel version push here.
Also, ensure that the end of your mono/fluoro line is trimmed or cut in a way that there is no edge material that would make the end of the line larger. You can add as much as .010″ to a line size just by the way it was cut.
Another issue is that in many cases, the size of the mono/fluoro line is actually larger than the manufacturers specifications.
If you do have one of our threading needles that is not accepting a size of line that it should, per our specifications, please email us and we will analyze and resolve the situation for you.
6. Straightening out DaHo Needles – All DaHo needles are made from 304 Stainless Steel Hypodermic tubing. In order to keep the outside size of all the threading needles as small as possible, thin walled tubing is used. Our loop splicing and reverse latch needles use heaver walled tubing as their inner sizes are not a factor. They are all very strong and will not fail under normal use.
If they are bent far enough to crease the tubing wall, they will not function properly and will have to be replaced. This would require some type of pressure on the needle that would not happen during any normal use.
Sometimes, especially with the smaller sized threading needles, they will bow or slightly bend from normal use. They will still be the same diameter as they have been, with no creases or flat spots in the tube, just not as straight. This does not affect their use, but is a situation that can be easily ‘fixed’ if desired – you can straighten them with your hands.
What you do is sit down and hold the needle end that is further away from the bow/bend in your hand. Usually, if you are right handed, hold the needle in your left hand, and visa versa. Position your hand on or close to your lap, holding the needle vertical.
Then, looking down the shaft of the needle you are holding, you will be able to see the bend location. Position the needle in your bottom hand, so that the bow/bend is going away from your body.
Then, with your other hand, position your thumb a little above and your first finger slightly below and more in line with the needle shaft leaving a small gap between them. Then, you can apply a pressure with your finger to the opposite side of the bow/bend location while using your thumb to hold the upper part of the needle above the bend location. Continue doing this, while moving your hand up the shaft of the needle only applying the pressure at the bow/bend location. It doesn’t take much pressure to see the effects of your efforts. Start out with a light pressure and increase it as needed. You will see it bending and can adjust the pressure as you go.
You can reposition the needle in the hand that is holding it on the bottom, to realign the bow/bend so you can most easily see and work on it with your other hand. If the needle is rotating while you are trying to straighten it, hold it firmer in your bottom hand. You can also swap the ends of the needle to get a better perspective on the area of the needle that you need to straighten.
You will find that after a very little practice, you will be able to straighten your needles with ease.