My dad was complaining to me about how much of a pita it was for him to tie flies because his hands are rough. He says everything sticks to his fingers when he is tieing. Any ideas to help? I asked him about latex gloves bUT he really didn't care for the idea. I think he really likes the idea of tieing but finding the time and energy to do it only to have it stick to his fingers discourages him. If anybody has any ideas I would appreciate it. Thanks!

When tying with epoxy, I use dishwasher rinse agents, like Cascade, etc. It's a water spot prevention wetting agent and I just dip my fingers in it and push the epoxy around before it sets. Maybe that would help your dad. I think the latex gloves are a great idea. I wear them anytime I'm using superglue, which is a lot. After a while, you forget your wearing them. Other than that, I got nothing. Good luck!

I've got pretty rough hands. Most thread will catch on my finger tips. Mono thread can help. So can a little lip balm on the finger tips, something a little waxy can help smooth over some of the rough spots. Otherwise, I try to use my tools and not touch the thread or materials if possible. Synthetic materials like Stever Farrar blend aren't very prone to getting caught on rough spots. Pre-made brushes like EP fiber can help. I guess it depends on what is being tied.

Interesting subject and excellent posts. I suspect most of us fisherman have rough hands and experience this to some degree. I noticed it with floss. I wonder if waxed thread would be helpful? I use it sometimes and never really recognized a problem. Then again, I never really thought about it until now.

An emery board can be used around your finger tips to take off rough spots that snag floss.

Overall, the obvious answer is hand lotion.

Use Purell Hand sanitizer. It is alcohol based and cleans the oil and dirt from the top layer of skin on hands. Makes it perfect to handle clear sticky tapes or other material where oily fingers can leave fingerprints.
Use a hand cream daily to make your hands softer and thus easier to clean up with an emery board or something to "sand" the rough spots from the hands. The moisturizer will soften the skin so try to emery board before you start hand cream treatments. Should take about a week for your hands to feel better.
If it is just the finger tips you can use heat to "smooth" the pads where you fingerprints are. You can burn yourself this way so be careful. Use something hot that you can touch and let the heat melt your upper layer of skin to burn it off.
Just like if you burn your hand you see it as a smooth flat shiny spot where you got burned. It will be difficult to determine how much heat he can take but you can try. If he really wants to tie then he should try anything he can.