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Lip Alignment

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wasn't sure if it was my glasses or not... i'm having a heck of a time aligning lips on my round baits. bad thing is, they are square bills! this should be easy!

So quick question. Do you guys put your lips in before or after painting? For some reason I've always put them in afterwards... I don't remember why, I'm sure there was a purpose. I'm thinking I might try to put it in before painting and align with a center line that is on the wood.

Ha, maybe this is why I went to swimbaits!

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If you put them on after paint it makes a very clean look. No paint on bill and no bill to paint around. But it is nice to have the bill to hold while painting if you not using another method already.

For alignment I use a line. Mark a line on center of bill with dry erase marker. The center of bait should be straight forward ,line tie and tail hook. My bench has a raised edge. I have drawn a line perpendicular to this edge and longer than my baits. Now it is just a matter of aligning the lip, front and rear of bait with line and pushing together against raised bench edge. Lip against edge of bench and bait tail away . Then slide my bait to the left and right of this line to make sure everything looks square with line.

Jig is best but i make no two baits exactly alike so it is hard but using the line as a reference is working well for me.

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I mount them after painting, before the clearcoat. If you have a laser level or pointer, you can shoot it down the tail and belly hangers and it should intersect the lip in the middle. Assuming you installed the hangers on the center line, that should nail it.

When I have trouble aligning a lip, it's because the body was not shaped symmetrically. On a non-symmetrical body, the lip slot may be canted to one side although it was straight when cut, or deeper on one side than the other, etc.

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This was discussed recently. I draw parallel lines on a piece of paper. I hold the bait up in front of the paper and adjust the lip so that it looks the same both sides in relation to the lines. Use one eye only or you will get parallax errors. It is not a perfect method, but seems to work fine for me.

Dave

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thanks for the info guys. i took another gander at the lures today (cleared them last night)... only with my contacts in. they seem straight! haha, must have been from the NyQuil I took last night :drool:

i'm curious to try these other methods too though. I think developing a jig would be great.

never know what you might like unless you give it a whorl.

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The center line aspect works well but I still have a problem with the bill being perpendicular to the bait. Here is a picture of rough prior to carve to pre-paint after sand. You can still see the center line mark.

If you cut the lip slot prior to carving, the perpendicular problem would go away.

Dave

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If you cut the lip slot prior to carving, the perpendicular problem would go away.

Dave

Dave, in the pictures the lip slot was cut on both blanks prior to carving, but I guess what I didn't make clear was, symmetry. If the bait isn't perfectly symmetric, the problem is still there, at least for me. I failed to mention what BobP was talking about, however I did not want to hijack the thread.

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another issue with having 2 bait halves is that they must go back together... its easy to be just a little off when glueing the 2 halves back together... especially with superglue. You don't have much time to do small adjustments. if the bait is off, sanding the outer edge a little to line it back up isn't a big deal. however, your lip slot is already cut (for the purpose of making it perpendicular to start). it is very difficult to make sure the slot is perfect on a 2 part crank. Though I have switched to mainly a 1 piece wood w/ eyescrews, I do still do the through-wire for when I put rattle chambers in. My best suggestion is to keep cutting the slot first (while the 2 halves are temporarily glued) and just trim it with a razor to square off the lip after putting them back together.

Keep in mind, I started this thread, so I am certainly looking for a better way too!

Mark, when you insert the lip before paint, is this before or after sealing with propionate solution (or whatever you use).

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Dave, in the pictures the lip slot was cut on both blanks prior to carving, but I guess what I didn't make clear was, symmetry. If the bait isn't perfectly symmetric, the problem is still there, at least for me. I failed to mention what BobP was talking about, however I did not want to hijack the thread.

Ha! Sorry, they looked like pencil marks. Those are very fine slots.

I make my slots extra wide, this gives me some room for adjustment.

Dave

Dave

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When glue a split bait (with 5 min epoxy, not superglue), I take a scrap piece of lip material and fit it into the lip slot so I'm sure 1) it is aligned properly and 2) there is no glue squeezed out into the slot. If glue did get in the slot, running scrap lip material through the slot several times removes it.

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Ha! Sorry, they looked like pencil marks. Those are very fine slots.

I make my slots extra wide, this gives me some room for adjustment.

Dave

Dave

Yeah, they do look like pencil lines. I've been using the thin circuit board material for the diving bills. I have been leaning toward the thicker Lexan material and that slot would probably be close to an eighth of an inch.

Jerry

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one thing is for sure. circuit board x gorilla super gluex balsa= 1 because there is no way you are getting that lip back out without going back to a pile of nothing. lexan I used to be able to pop free, but that circuit board really seems to stick to the balsa. the other nice thing, you only have to make one cut with your bandsaw for the correct thickness.

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