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68KingFisher

Question about wire.....

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I ran across a big ol roll of stainless steel stitcher wire in a box in the garage that came from my days working in the printing industry....the wire is the same stuff that holds magazines together....like staple material....it is a round wire and meaures out to be .020"......would this stuff work for thru the bait wire or is it too thin?

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I think your biggest problem with that size would be the bait staying in tune. I think it would bend too easy. Probably even when you caught a fish it would cause problems eith the eye straitening out. I obviously don't think your problem is in the wire breaking unless you have to continually bend it back to where it should be. But I don't think a fish will break it alone. This seems like babbling to me so if it doesn't make sense just let me know. haha

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If it's hard temper stainless I think it will be strong enough but I don't think it's ideal. If it's soft temper stainless, it's too weak. The weakest wire I've tried was .031" dia soft brass. Never had it break and the lures stayed in tune but it is puny looking. .0403" soft temper stainless is stronger and works well - I regularly use it for thru-wiring and for line ties on bass baits. JMHO, soft temper stainless in .0403 or .050 dia is ideal. I find it frustrating to shape hard stainless. It's hard to bend it accurately and it's hard to keep it in a single plane while bending, which it must be to fit inside a bait and glue the halves together. I also don't like hard stainless inside balsa because it is easy to damage the nose of the bait while tuning it. Considering the effort it takes to build a crankbait and the relatively cheap cost of wire, get the right stuff. 1/4 lb spools from McMaster-Carr are quite reasonable.

If you want brass wire, I recommend .050" dia soft temper. It's a bit softer than soft stainless but brass is a tradition on shallow bass baits. Some say it helps the bait to "hunt". Don't know that's true - I frankly doubt it - but the most sought after classic cranks used brass wire, so it's still a plus feature for many crankbait nuts. Don't worry that soft wire will deform in use. When bent into a small diameter circle, it is surprisingly strong. Some thru-wired bass baits use copper wire - the popular D-Bait is an example. It also works well in terms of shaping and strength but I don't like its propensity to corrode, especially in contact with dissimilar metals.

Edited by BobP
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@ 68KingFisher

If I've converted properly , that wire is of about 0,5 mm thickness , which is way too thin for wireforms inside of wooden baits , ......danderson has already mentioned the reasons !

The only SSt wire of smaller diameter , that I can imagine to still work out without bending constantly would be the wire used in dental laboratories to make braces , .........I wore one as a kid , .....and this stuff definately is very rigid .

But I guess , it was also a bit thicker than yours :?????

But I use special fishing wire of sucha diameter for making single wire leaders for smaller gliders and topwaters !

good luck , diemai:yay:

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I have used 0.5 mm (which is about 0.020") hard steel wire in my first through-wired cranks, because I could't find the right diameter in shops. They still work very well.

But now I use 0.8 mm SS wire (0.032") for my cranks, (2-3.5 " long) which I think is ideal, both for through wirering and for twisted wire eyes. BobP has another idea about the ideal diameter, and I remember that Diemai uses 1 mm diameter for the wire. So I think you have to choose your ideal diameter as well. Also, I think you have to avoid the extremes (too soft or too hard), so choose something in between.

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I don't buy into these debates much these days, but it's all too much for me:huh:.

For me .7-.8 mm is the go and if I could get it .9mm. I sympathise with BobP and his out of control 'through wires' and 'cracked D2T' etc, so what I have been doing is annealing it which makes it much more pliable, and you can reverse it.pete

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Great Question and Input!

Annealed SS wire likely has a yield strength of around 30-35 ksi while hardened could be between 100-200 ksi (estimate). If you start with annealed wire, twisting or any form of cold work will hardened it and greatly increase its yield strength (roughly the force required to permanently bend it). The point is that you can anneal your wire, (like Hazmail), twist-it, form it and end up with stiff cold worked wire. I anneal the 0.031 in. diameter wire from Jann's and this is about as small a diameter that seems appropriate. I anneal with propane and then sand the oxidation off with 320-400 grit paper. (pain)

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That idea to anneal the wire is a great tip. :worship:

I don't use sst wire for through wire or hinges, but I use it to make the coil spring attachments for my soft plastic tails.

I've been using spinner bait wire, and it's tempered. I wear leather gloves, and wrap it around a 5/16" lag screw to get the spiral spring shape, but it's a bear.

I am going to try the annealing idea to soften it before I make the next batch.

I'm sure the wire will still be strong enough to hold the tails, and I'm hoping it will be easier to bend after annealing. :yay:

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Ok, it sounds like my wire is too small and possibly too soft so i'll reserve its use for other stuff.....right now i'm just using it to hang my baits with after dipping in sealer....lol.

I would like to ask about the annealing process......Can someone explain how to do this.....I saw Jesse James anneal a sheet of aluminum on his bike building show several years ago using a cutting torch that had a big sooty flame....but they only touched on the subject breifly, and I never really knew what he did....nor that you could undo it after your forming was done.:?...I'd love to know more.

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Mr. Kingfisher:

Bob P has got the answer here, start with annealed wire. (Bob are they giving you free shipping for advertising?)

You can anneal SS wire by heating it to 1800-1950F roughly. I use a propane torch to heat it to bright red or more for a few seconds. If I was smart, I could suggest a flux of some kind might prevent the light oxide film. Drawing it thru sandpaper takes care of it though.

I'm going over to Bob's house and "borrow" some of his annealed SS wire.

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A guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do...but why anneal wire when you can buy a 1/4 lb spool for less than $7. One spool lasts me about a year, making around 100 baits.

McMaster-Carr

Go ahead and order some polycarbonate sheet for lips while you're at it!

Thanks for the link.....Guess i'll go your route instead of messing with the wire i've got....too bad since i've got a 5lb spool of this stuff....I need to figure out some kinda use for it....lol

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A guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do...but why anneal wire when you can buy a 1/4 lb spool for less than $7. One spool lasts me about a year, making around 100 baits.

McMaster-Carr

Go ahead and order some polycarbonate sheet for lips while you're at it!

Bob,

I'm just cheap. :lol: I still have all this spinner bait wire, and nothing else to use it for.

When I run out, I'll order some from McMaster-Carr.

68KingFisher,

Annealing is heating the metal hot enough to take away any tension/tempering in the metal. Red hot usually is enough. The red hot metal lets the molecules become random again, which their softest state. Retempering, at least for cold cheisels, from my high school metal shop days, means reheating the metal after it's shaped, and then quenching it, so the outside cools faster than the inside, and puts the metal back under tension. You dip the blade into water, then pull it out and watch the color of the metal change as it cools. It cools fastest where it's thinnest, on the cutting edge. There's a straw yellow color you look for, and the metal will cool through shades of red until it gets down to this straw yellow color. Then you redip it and let it stay in the water until it cools completel, which locks the molecules in that orientation. It has been too many years since I first did this, but that's what I remember. :teef:

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Silverdoc, I own 50% of McMaster-Carr's outstanding common shares. Not!;)

I do like them because the prices seem fair, the shipping is reasonable and fast, and they carry a bunch of stuff. I think their warehouse is in Atlanta.

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hehe, that sounds just like me. I got a thick piece of wood that I stick the wire end in, and the other end of the wire has the bait on it.

I just sealed a few so I used my paintgun holder/strainer rack to hang the lures above the can so they'd drip into it...i'll probably do something different later but for now this worked ok.

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