10 replies to this topic

[gadawgs]

I have been trying to become more concistent in my lures using molds and templates but i havent come up with a good way to concistently weight my lures. i know about placement but im concerned with the amount of weight. right now im drilling holes and dripping lead solder into it and counting the drops but im sure their has to be better ways. Any ideas?

[BobP]

You have to weigh the ballast with a digital scale or use integrated belly hangers/ballasts of known weight. Drill the hole and epoxy them in. A digital scale can be purchased online for around $25 and it's one of the indispensable tools of bait building IMO. I don't weigh just ballast - I weigh everything that goes into a bait. It allows me to clone a bait that works well (if you keep notes like you should!) and I can build a bait to within a couple of hundredths of an ounce of a final target weight when doing a new design.

[gadawgs]

will any digital scale work?

[BobP]

Sure, anything will work. I use a cheap battery powered Digiweigh scale. Measures up to 8 oz in tenths of grams or hundredths of ounces and its plastic cover can be used as a larger tray if you have lots of small parts to weigh or something too large to fit on the scale's weighing pad. Turn it on, wait a second for it to zero itself and weigh away.

[BullwinkleII]

gadawgs, on 10 March 2010 - 03:57 PM, said:

I have been trying to become more concistent in my lures using molds and templates but i havent come up with a good way to concistently weight my lures. i know about placement but im concerned with the amount of weight. right now im drilling holes and dripping lead solder into it and counting the drops but im sure their has to be better ways. Any ideas?

I would go with adding too much and drilling it out to adjust or getting it roughly correct but just under, and adding it with different weighted eyes or some lead wire around the front trebles

make your eye pupils out of lead and black nail polish and keep a range of different weights, that way you can finish the lure, float it in a glass of water/seawater, add weight till it sits the way you want it to, then select eyes to match the weight... you could even make floating eyes to add buoyancy.


-craig

[.dsaavedra.]

why not just use splitshot or small bullet or egg sinkers inserted into drilled holes?

[garyo1954]

You can get this Royal Digital Postal scale at any Wal-mart for $24.97.
It will be in the office supplies where the postal packing tape, boxes, etc are located.
It will weigh in ounces to tenths of an ounce, pounds and ounces to tenths of an ounce, and grams.
To give you some idea one tenth of an ounce is about 3 grams. (It takes a fraction over 28 grams to make an ounce.)
You can find conversion charts online if necessary.

[Lance]

DSV, on 11 March 2010 - 07:59 PM, said:

why not just use splitshot or small bullet or egg sinkers inserted into drilled holes?

That is what I have been doing and it works good. Of course you can't control the weight to exact specs since you have to use whatever the weight you are employing actually weighs. Still in all it is the simplest, easy way; and I like simple and easy.

[CarverGLX]

DSV, on 11 March 2010 - 07:59 PM, said:

why not just use splitshot or small bullet or egg sinkers inserted into drilled holes?

Thats what i do. Make two halves... drill press out the size and contour of flattened shot (made using a vice and stop) with a drillbit shaped by grinding. Press together using vice and glue with tru wire.

All kinds of different size shot available.... split to shotgun #9 or even #12

[BullwinkleII]

I found the problem with just adding weight by filling a drilled hole with shot is it has to be done before all your layers of clear etc, which changes everything. I start with that but I wanted to be able to add or remove that last bit of weight right at the end when you have a finished lure. that was the only way I could get my lure to suspend, float, or sink just right. small bream lures though so perhaps this is being too fussy.

-craig

[Fish With Teeth]

BobP, on 10 March 2010 - 08:28 PM, said:

Sure, anything will work. I use a cheap battery powered Digiweigh scale. Measures up to 8 oz in tenths of grams or hundredths of ounces and its plastic cover can be used as a larger tray if you have lots of small parts to weigh or something too large to fit on the scale's weighing pad. Turn it on, wait a second for it to zero itself and weigh away.

I too use a digital scale for some stages of lure builbing. I use mine for measureing out equal parts of Envirotex and epoxy. You can really get accurate measurements doing it that way.I bought my scale off of Ebay for way under $10.00. It has five modes of measurements including grams, grains, carots, and a couple others I can't recall.