muskie lure making/carving help!!

[steve48]

i am looking for something to do this winter and im thinking about carving some muskie lures.i have made one lure before out of balsa wood which was fairly easy shaping the lure but adding thru wire and e-tex without a turner was tough. this time im looking to make some type of crank/twitch and jerk bait of out some harder wood. what kind of wood is fairly easy to carve but still can hold screw eyes? for harder woods do i still need to add e-tex or something to keep if from absorbing too much water or is that not a problem. and for you guys who carve lures what do you use? i have heard pocket knives and wood carving knives work but im looking for more insite(brands, prices, sizes). im not going to make 100's so i dont need power tools or anything like that and i dont mind taking time to individually carve each lure out. as you can see im pretty lost and confused in this subject so any thing will help.

thanks for any help.

[jerkbait]

Steve,

Lots of people carve cedar and basswood. I use them both and have had gool luck with screw eyes holding up well. They both can be carves with nearly any knife and sanded or shaped withy a file or wrasp. Both should be sealed with epoxy Devcon 2 ton or ETex prior to paint.

Good Luck with the building

Jerk!

[fatfingers]

Even if you're not going to make baits in quantity, there are a few things that will enable to you make your baits with greater uniformity and faster than using only basic knives, files and rasps.

You might consider purchasing a sanding disc that attaches to an ordinary drill. You'd be surprise how much easier it is to shape a bait after cutting out the basic frame from wood.

You can buy just two or three discs of different grits and really get past the shaping part quickly.