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texasboy

help a beginner

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If cedar didn't work out for you, balsa will probably be worse because it's much softer and you can quickly "go too far" working it. I'd try a few of the ready made balsa bodies from Jann's Netcraft or similar suppliers to get your feet wet. Add hardware and a lip, paint it, clearcoat it and voila, you're fishing. Hand shaping a symetrical crankbait from soft balsa takes experience.

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It is best to make all those critical cuts before shaping, ballast holes, eye screw holes and lip slot. That way, if you screw up, you don't lose an hour of shaping. Also, the body can be shaped to compensate for any misalignment, or just start again.

Always use forstner bits, or at the very least, sharp drills.

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Tboy, I wasn't trying to steer you away from crankbait making. A bunch of guys here on TU are addicted to it and others do it for income AND fun. TU has tutorials and lots of posts describing more techniques than you can imagine. If you read them all, your head will explode. So use the tutorials and the search feature on the hardbaits forum to explore your options. Starting out with a pre-made wood body bypasses some of the hardest stuff and gets you to a fish catching first crankbait faster.

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The Netcraft bodies will get you safely past the first hurdle and get you to the waters edge a bit quicker. But don't give up on the carving. Give yourself an uninterrupted 20 mins a day, for carving practise. There is far more pleasure to be had, catching a fish on one of YOUR OWN creations. I suspect that this is the message that BobP was making, I just want to make sure you got it.

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Tboy, I wasn't trying to steer you away from crankbait making. A bunch of guys here on TU are addicted to it and others do it for income AND fun. TU has tutorials and lots of posts describing more techniques than you can imagine. If you read them all, your head will explode. So use the tutorials and the search feature on the hardbaits forum to explore your options. Starting out with a pre-made wood body bypasses some of the hardest stuff and gets you to a fish catching first crankbait faster.

HAHAHA, that's so funny. Note to self, "Don't read all post and tutorials... head will explode."

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I remember my first experience with wood carving came from Boy Scouts and did a check of web based wood carving merit badge resources and came up with this. There seems to be an effort to put the merit badge information on the web, but the manuals aren’t posted there yet. It used to have some good carving exercises in it.

http://www.woodworking-news.com/woodcarving_merit_badge.shtml

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