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Sfrye37

Lure consistency

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Guys I am just curious of some of your setups for getting the same wood lures consistently the same.  I want to produce multiple lures at the same time and am curious about how you guys do it.  Currently I am cutting a few blanks out with a band saw and then using a regular drill to drill holes for hook hangers and belly weights.  Then sanding each lure by hand with sand paper.  I am planning on getting a small drill press soon and trying to make my mind up on a sander of some kind.  Sanding each lure by hand is a pain.  Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. 

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Well, I don’t think hand shaped lures can ever be perfectly consistent.   But you can get close using a router table and safety templates to radius the edges.  There’s a tutorial about that here on the site.  I prefer using hand tools and a Dremel sander after marking all the round over and taper limits with a compass and removing most of the material with a good woodcarving knife.  Some guys prefer rounding over with sandpaper glued into pieces of pvc pipe of the appropriate diameter.  If you use hand tools to shape lures you have to develop a sharp eye to keep them symmetrical and consistent.  That just comes with experience.  But I think the key is to become very standardized and consistent with whatever method you choose.  My last choice would be hand sanding with pieces of sandpaper.  That has been the slowest and least consistent method for me.

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Combination belt /disc sander very useful for me sfrye, A lot depends on which style and size of lures your hoping to make in numbers consistently , and also type of timber. Like bob says, if you're lure design allows it , a table mounted router can give  consistent curved radius on edges. I regularly use this method on big flat sided lures, I use freehand with no template or whatever - I hold the blank in my hand , but there are methods of doing it more safely - Doing it this way is faster , but especially with smaller lures is dangerous .....

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I've been working on the same dilemma.  Sure takes a keen eye to hand sand/carve lures that are all exactly same.  But I've learned lots from youtube and forums like this.

I like some of this guys ideas on making simple jigs to replicate shapes and angles. Tough thing for me is that I like to make different sizes and shapes and stuff.

https://youtu.be/Y7_asjtI2UQ

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This depends on the lure itself, if round for most of it then a wood lathe will do, I have a Vega duplicator for turning down the lure with good duplication but the best way for consistently doing a lure would be to make a master then a rubber silicone mold and pour it out of resin. I do musky lures within a gram of each other. It is nice working with wood, but each lure will be a little different from the other. Flat glide baits are a little more easy to work with.

Wayne 

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It is always a balance.  I don't make lures to sell; well not really.  Each lure, even though I do mostly resin lures, still takes so much time that I would need to charge to much to make it pay.  I give lures to friends and family, but somehow that seems different.  Still, I can't keep up with that demand.

Were I to sell lures, I would either need to charge more, or make cheaper.  Now, that is a tough problem.  Not one of greed, but one of flat out logistics.

I realize that I am an old timer and I still remember paying the extreme price of $1.95 for some of the early crank baits in my youth.  They were not called that in those days.  LOL  When lures went over $5.00 each I was sure the fishing industry was over!  Now a $20 bait is pretty common and I see some custom baits at over $200.

Still, I think the price point is such that we all are looking for the balance point.  

I know that the average fishermen has little knowledge.  They will walk the aisles of the store and pick a lure based on price, color, shape, in that order.  The average fisherman, the 90% that catches 10% of the fish, would/will never spend the money for a "quality bait".  So, what do we do to locate the 10% that do look for quality and craftsmanship?

And, when you think of it, WE may be the 10% on this site so we may be buying each others baits.  :huh::D

 

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 I believe you find a lot of them at lure collector shows because they appreciate the quality, also they tend to be tournament guys, looking for an edge or to have something that the others don't have...I  can tell you that most do not show the general public what they actually use unless its on purpose and the cameras rolling, sponsors need love too.

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we build baits in many aspects. molded baits,and lathe baits to flat sided bandsaw baits. one major factor is WOOD. even after 40 years of this craziness I still feel wood is the holy grail.theres always a magic bullet in every batch of handbuilt wooden lures..thats what every fisherman seeks lol..as for pricing lol. yes years ago 1.99 was big money for a lure.,usually those were in dads box and you could only look and not touch.

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I got out of making crankbaits for the past 2 yrs. I just plain got burnt out. I am going to get back at it again soon. What I have decided to do is make baits and just enjoy making them again. What I make is for sale if someone wants them. Anyone that really makes baits for sale can tell you is that you have to be there for your customers. Even if you aren't making baits at the time, you have to make yourself available in case someone needs something. This is especially true for pros or the truly dedicated. My phone blew up so much with calls that the fun went out of making the baits. When I got to the point that I was having trouble keeping up with demand I sat down and re-thought how to do business. For me, when I got to the point where most of my free time was ate up with making baits, the fun went out of it. So my new plan is to just make them when I feel like it. The fun needs to be put back into my hobby. That is one of the reasons that I started making baits in the first place.

Skeeter 

 

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10 hours ago, Skeeter said:

I got out of making crankbaits for the past 2 yrs. I just plain got burnt out. I am going to get back at it again soon. What I have decided to do is make baits and just enjoy making them again. What I make is for sale if someone wants them. Anyone that really makes baits for sale can tell you is that you have to be there for your customers. Even if you aren't making baits at the time, you have to make yourself available in case someone needs something. This is especially true for pros or the truly dedicated. My phone blew up so much with calls that the fun went out of making the baits. When I got to the point that I was having trouble keeping up with demand I sat down and re-thought how to do business. For me, when I got to the point where most of my free time was ate up with making baits, the fun went out of it. So my new plan is to just make them when I feel like it. The fun needs to be put back into my hobby. That is one of the reasons that I started making baits in the first place.

Skeeter 

 

That's why I stopped selling baits.  It took the fun out of making them.

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I got a whiff of what making baits for sale was like years ago when I gave a BASS pro some baits as a gratuity for a guide trip.  A few months later, he asked me to build a dozen for him.  Looking into the commercial abyss, I decided customers and delivery schedules were not what I wanted, so built and traded the new baits to him for some custom commercial baits he had shown me.  

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On 11/30/2017 at 9:14 AM, Sfrye37 said:

Guys I am just curious of some of your setups for getting the same wood lures consistently the same.  I want to produce multiple lures at the same time and am curious about how you guys do it.  Currently I am cutting a few blanks out with a band saw and then using a regular drill to drill holes for hook hangers and belly weights.  Then sanding each lure by hand with sand paper.  I am planning on getting a small drill press soon and trying to make my mind up on a sander of some kind.  Sanding each lure by hand is a pain.  Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. 

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Salty,

Wood is too inconsistent to get every bait the same.  Even if you cut all of your blanks out of the same part of one tree, and dry them all exactly the same, there will be variations in grain and density.

I am assuming you already have one of your baits that works the way you want it to.

Since you already get your blanks as similar as possible, I'd suggest that you weigh one without any hardware, hook hangers, lips, or ballast, and mark down that blanks weight.  Then finish that bait, with ballast, hook hangers, lip, paint and finish, and the trebles and split rings.  See how much the finished bait weighs. 

If it s the same as your already successful bait, then you'll know what weight your blanks need to be.

If it weighs less, you'll know how much more ballast to add.  

If it weighs  more, you'll know how much ballast to remove.

Most importantly, you'll know the target weight for the bait blanks, and can adjust your ballast weight based on each blanks weight before finishing.

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The wood is the weak link in consistency as the density varies. I overcome this by controlling the final density and adjusting the ballast accordingly. This does not mean that you have to do Archimedes on each lure. You just need to know the density of the plank, and keep notes. This is all particularly important if you are going for a lure close to neutral buoyancy. My prefered buoyancy is a 10% floater.

If you are copying a favourite/successful lure, it is a good idea to measure the final buoyancy, this gives you a reliable number to aim for. This may sound complicated, but with practice, it becomes second nature, with of course an accurate gram scale.

Dave

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