What goes wrong

It dried out, or it got mixed

On this page11

The cement thickened The dropper bulb perished The cement was in PET The bead sizes mixed Labelled by colour alone The dubbing compressed The hackle got crushed The floatant leaked in a pocket The provenance was thrown away The fix for all of it is small, clear, labelled and lidded References

Head cement fails in the bottle, not on the fly.

The cement thickened

Solvent through a poor liner over months. The bottle looks full and the contents will not flow, and the usual response is to thin it, which changes it.

The dropper bulb perished

Elastomer against a solvent. It goes before the cement does, and a dropper that has gone sticky is no longer dosing a drop.

The cement was in PET

Which clouds or softens with a solvent. 84 glass containers here are the right answer and 165 PET are not, for this one leaf.

The bead sizes mixed

A 2.8 and a 3.2 mm tungsten bead are indistinguishable by eye and weight a fly differently. One knocked jar and two sizes are gone.

Labelled by colour alone

Bead finishes and dubbing colours are close to each other, and around one in twelve men cannot separate a colour code reliably. Numbers and words on the body of the container.

The dubbing compressed

Packed tight into a container and left. It still works and it no longer picks up in a pinch the way it did, which a tyer feels before they diagnose.

The hackle got crushed

A cape folded into a drawer or a jar. Feather takes a set and a crushed cape is a cape you fight. Flat storage, which this shelf does not have.

The floatant leaked in a pocket

Pressure, warmth and being sat on. A screw cap half-turned in the cold is the usual cause and a latching lid is the usual fix.

The provenance was thrown away

Hackle bought in a labelled envelope, transferred to a box, envelope binned. The species and the supplier went with it, and those are the only facts that answer the legal question.

The fix for all of it is small, clear, labelled and lidded

One jar size repeated, in words on the body, with a latching lid for anything that rolls. And glass with a liner for the one leaf that is a solvent.

References

The Davis Pack Supply catalog, measured 19 October 2026. The fly tying shelf is 716 rows: 335 containers and 381 closures. 5 mL to 250 mL with a median of 59; 30 containers at 15 mL or under, 100 at 30 or under, 204 at 60 or under, and nothing above 250 mL. 165 PET, 84 glass, 62 HDPE, 24 PP. 275 bottles, 59 jars, 1 tube. 79 white, 71 clear, 61 amber, 42 blue, 24 natural, 19 black. Closures: 260 continuous thread, 43 dropper assemblies, 20 dome lids, 16 flip top, 14 phenolic, 9 liners and sealing discs, 6 specialty, 6 dropper tips and caps, 3 euro droppers.

The archetype behind this shelf is store-small-dry: 15 to 500 mL, wide mouth, PP and PET and glass, cold, solid, chunky, scooped, with "small dry parts, wide mouth to get fingers in, clear so you can see what is inside" as its stated reason. Four of the six leaves are dry sorting crafts it describes well, and the shelf does not follow it: 275 of 335 containers are bottles.

16 U.S.C. 703(a), the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Unless permitted by regulation, "it shall be unlawful at any time, by any means or in any manner, to pursue, hunt, take, capture, kill, attempt to take, capture, or kill, possess, offer for sale, sell, offer to barter, barter, offer to purchase, purchase, deliver for shipment, ship, export, import, cause to be shipped, exported, or imported, deliver for transportation, transport or cause to be transported, carry or cause to be carried, or receive for shipment, transportation, carriage, or export, any migratory bird, any part, nest, or egg of any such bird, or any product, whether or not manufactured, which consists, or is composed in whole or part, of any such bird or any part, nest, or egg thereof" as specified in four bilateral treaties. law.cornell.edu

Written from 16 U.S.C. 703(a) and 50 CFR 10.13, and from the catalog as it stood on 19 October 2026. This property does not say which species are on the protected list, because that is a lookup against 50 CFR 10.13 rather than something to assert from memory. CITES, the Endangered Species Act and the Lacey Act can each reach exotic tying materials independently and none of them is read here.