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fivefishwish

Swim Bait Joints

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Thanks Mark!

Painting them really was not a problem. I held it nose and tail with alligator clips. Kinda like the hacksaw trick. I just took 1/8" wide masking tape and wrap it around the cloth section. Then paint away. Spray on a couple of coats of DN. Let dry and remove tape. The joints are so close together, that it is hard to paint the inside. I just kind of feathered out the paint the deeper in the joint I got.

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I've made swimbaits using 200lb braid for hinges. The biggest problem I ran into was the clear coat process. There is just no way to keep the lure from flopping every which way and also no way to avoid the top coat traveling onto the braid. With metal hinges you have some small control, plus removing clear coat from metal hinges is quite easy - just get something small enough to fit into the gaps and scrape away. With braid, one small mistake and it's bye-bye hinge. If you construct your lure with a product that is water resistant from the start, that would help alleviate the final part of the lure process.

This rack is what I use to keep the lure from flopping around. It hooks right to my dryer. th_100_4156.jpg

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I've made swimbaits using 200lb braid for hinges. The biggest problem I ran into was the clear coat process. There is just no way to keep the lure from flopping every which way and also no way to avoid the top coat traveling onto the braid. With metal hinges you have some small control, plus removing clear coat from metal hinges is quite easy - just get something small enough to fit into the gaps and scrape away. With braid, one small mistake and it's bye-bye hinge. If you construct your lure with a product that is water resistant from the start, that would help alleviate the final part of the lure process.

 

How about a heavy monofilament?  Is it too stiff?  

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I think a lot of these materials are too stiff, seeing as the flexibility is required over such a short distance, from one section of the lure to the next, just a few millimeters.

I think there is a solution in a nylon thread, which I am holding in front of me. It is close to 1/16" diameter, incredibly strong. I cannot see a pike or a musky cutting it, may be fray it a little, but it is a compound thread and very flexible.

As mentioned in several posts previous, fixing with glue and dealing with topcoats are the problems, with wicking.

Diemai touched on one solution in post No17. Fitting small diameter plastic tubes in the lure sections and passing the thread through without bonding. The string is fixed at the front with a knot or crimp, passes through all the sections and back to the front through a second set of tubes and fixed.

As long as the string is loose, the sections will find their own position. The sections are chamfered to allow for movement, as with all jointed swimbaits.

I built a glued version of this idea 8 years ago and it worked very well with a very nice S-shaped action. I never got around to posting it or developing the idea further.

Dave

Edited by Vodkaman
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