Three blowouts eh? Well that is rather embarrassing. Admittedly, I've been stepping down from what I used to do on the shank/hang back flies, which was lots of thread and super glue on top of doubled over wire or braid. After never having had one fail I started easing off for the sake of tying time, but perhaps I've gone too far the other direction now.

Were the loops that failed braid or wire? Did they fail after fishing them for a while? What did your "test" involve? A hard steady pull?

My bad regardless, just curious as to the nature of the problem as I haven't seen it and thanks for the heads up.