BobP

Maybe it’s just my imagination but the lip seems too far back in the body. Depending on the attitude while retrieved, the nose of the bait might obstruct the water flow over the lip, killing the action. Like Travis, I always look at commercial baits for clues to designing good baits. If anyone thinks they can build a better jerkbait than a Megabass Ito 110, they’re probably mistaken. So why not copy its basic design details. Take a look at jerkbaits from 20 different companies. See much design variability? I don’t. If you want to experiment, good on ya. I do that too. But only after

It may help to strain it through a piece of nylon hosiery.

I use a scroll saw to shape baits and cut lip slots. A “standard” blade has a kerf that exactly fits 1/16” G10 but is too thin for polycarbonate Lexan lips, so you have to cut them double. Frankly, I don’t see it as a problem. Since I use Rod Bond paste epoxy to glue lips, if the slot ends up a little ragged or oversize, the paste fills the extra space up and it doesn’t matter.

I started lure building because I bought high priced balsa baits only to have them fail after only a few hours of fishing. But I never had a bass break one. They all failed because of water infiltration, which I think is the primary failure point of all wooden crankbaits. So when I build, I pay most attention to making a tough waterproof finish. If they can’t break the finish, they can’t do more harm and thru-wiring is irrelevant.

I build bass lures but my buddy trolls for stripers and I build balsa trolling cranks for him. Same construction methods as my bass cranks. Pound for pound, stripers fight twice as hard as largemouth. No failures yet over 15 years of striper fishing. Just like all you guys, my opinion about thru-wiring is informed by my fishing experience. That’s mine. Yours may vary.

I exclusively build bass lures and if a bass ever breaks one of my non-thru-wired balsa baits I will gratefully and cheerfully salute the beast as he swims off with half my lure in its mouth. Hundreds of crankbaits, hundreds of bass, I’m still waiting. I don’t think thru-wiring offers added strength to a lure compared to well designed and installed hardwire. But build crankbaits however you think is best for the species you target.

I think thru-wire is mainly an artifact of large scale lure manufacturing simplification by Rapala and not a quality based decision. How many times has a bass fisherman had a fish break the body of a Balsa crankbait but had the catch saved by a thru-wire? Not often enough to worry about.

Quite a few commercial crankbait makers use siphon feed bottle brushes. Hobby builders? Not so many. If you paint batches of lures with the same color scheme, a set of siphon brushes or a single brush with multiple bottles makes good sense.

Though you didn’t say, I’m gonna assume you are using a SLOW cure type of epoxy, such as a slow cure Devcon Two Ton glue or a craft decoupage epoxy like Envirotex Lite (aka Etex). There are dozens of epoxy brands with different formulas, viscosities, cure times, etc. You want to avoid fast cure 5 minute cure epoxies. They are not waterproof, cure too fast to level properly and yellow quickly. Epoxy and UV cured polyester tend to be thicker coatings, MCU tends to be thinner. I have no data on hardness and scratch resistance among the recommended coatings but just to me, MCU SEEMS to be tou

I don’t know what’s available in SA but there are 3 clears that I consider tough enough for crankbaits. Epoxy, UV cured polyester resin, and moisture cured urethane. Of these, UV cured resin is the fastest by far. Each has pluses and minuses and each requires a specific application and curing procedure. To my mind, none of them are really suitable for dipping because they are either too viscous (UV resin) or too susceptible to contaminating finish you want to store after dipping ( Moisture cured urethane). I brush on all of the clears. The easiest to apply is moisture cured urethane whic

For line ties in the nose, the closer it is to the lip surface, the harder and wider the action of the bait will be. Of course like Vodkaman says, there are multiple factors in designing how a bait will operate. Your lip angle is quite aggressive and the lip itself seems fairly long, both of which impart more action to the bait. Too much? Depends on testing and how buoyant the bait is, or in other words, how much and where you placed the ballast.

I use lacquer thinner. Dip the brush, agitate, blot brush on cloth, repeat. I use nylon bristle flat artist brushes. The finer bristles pop epoxy bubbles as I apply it. And the brushes last for years.

I build baits in batches of 6 and I use Rod Bond paste epoxy, the original slow cure variety, to glue in hardware and lips. It’s strong and waterproof and stays where you put it. Plus, I can mix up a batch and easily install 6 lips before it begins to harden. For lips, I push the paste into the slot with a thin wire until its filled with epoxy, then push in a dry lip. The excess squeezes out of the slot at the rear of the lip and is easy to wipe clean. Do not butter the lip before insertion as that causes a mess on the front of the lip. The slow cure time (6 hrs to begin, 24 hrs to finis

Solarez is intended for surf board finishing. The wax flakes it contains and the white blush that it develops doesn’t matter much on a large white surf board, but it does matter to many lure finishers. I couldn’t use it for that reason and defaulted to using it as a quick strong waterproof undercoating, for which it was excellent. My quart of Solarez eventually hardened and was thrown away. Jmho, if you want a uv resin that hardens to a clear coating, you want a “doming” uv resin. The only two I know of are Alumi-uv and inexpensive Chinese casting uv resins sold on Amazon, etc. alumi-uv

A lot of TUers have tried Solarez. It’s very cheap for a uv resin but has one drawback that caused many of us to drop it, namely that the surface cure is accomplished by wax flakes in the resin. After the cure is complete, you often have a white blush in the finish. Some guys don’t mind it, some do. Alumi-uv and the Chinese craft resins you see on Amazon are a different type of uv resin and don’t use wax flakes.