UKandy
I have disected many baits, and alot of balsa line thru baits are not sealed properly, or should I say sealed for structural strength in mind, normaly they epoxy the line thru channel but do nothing to the balsa to make it stronger, so it's rather easy to tear the line through out of the bait either upwards or forwards, once the line through starts to tear slightly it will let water into the bait which will eventually cause catastophic damage. I twist my own line tie with stainless steel wire and epoxy it into hardwood dowells that are then epoxied into the balsa body which is sealed to my standards and have yet had a line tie fail or lost a fish because of a bad line tie, My line, hooks or split rings will fail before my bait fails. Hope that helps, but with Bass sized Balsa baits I see absolutly no need to build line through.