MarkR

Sorry for the long winded post. I have just begun making wood lures and set out on a mission to make some musky jerkbaits and have since also jumped into making crankbaits. I have a total of about 16 types/sizes of lures in progress, I attached a sample pic of a few here. Not the best approach I am sure but it is what I have now and love making them. I have done a few things that some will question as work arounds but hey you use what you have. I will provide a full progress once I get water tests started in a few weeks. To try and make the water testing more efficient I will do multiple line ties on the crankbaits where the ties are on the lip. Due to my very limited tool selection, a jig saw, drill and sandpaper I am trying to make some things easier if I can. My question is whether anyone knows how the action is affected, is it destroyed or made unstable, if I use one larger hole, say 1/4" to pop the line tie thru the lip instead of doing a smaller hole for each of the wire ends. So what I would have is 3 larger holes, say 1/4" diameter instead of 6 smaller ones, 1/8" which are basically filled by the wire. What the one hole per tie allows is for one wire to be used for multiple line ties instead of tying off the extra line ties to the main wire. The easiest would be if the larger holes don't really affect the action but if it does I have some possible solutions. One is to score a piece of lexan that the wire fits in the score slot and glue it to the underside of the lure lip in turn filling the bottom of the 3 holes while adding some strength to the lip. Another solution is if there is any type of glue/paste I could fill the holes with, this could be risky. Open to any recommendations or general comments of my progress so far.

Thanks Benton. Very nice bait BTW

Thanks Benton. I wasn't sure if just putting the ends of the line tie wire in the bait would work, but you clearly have shown it does. I thought the wire was always run thru in those cases. You just saved me a lot of time.

Thanks Benton, if garolite holds it I would think the lexan can handle it. Only one way to find out. If you don't mind me asking, how do you lock the pin into the lip? I would assume you open the pin up on the bottom of the lip with the loop out the top. Have you noticed any issues with the garolite lips delaminating/breaking if you bang the lure off rocks as composites are susceptable to impact.

I was wondering if anyone on here has tried using rivet pins for the line attachment in deep dive crankbaits with Lexan bills, I will be using 5mm Lexan. I posted a while back about setting out on making some wood musky lures and got some great advice. Unfortunately life has gotten in the way since that post and I have had to change my strategies to try and get the production line back up and running. IMO rivet pins whould be great for testing new lure designs as they allow for a quick change of tie location. My concern is whether the Lexan will hold up if a big fish grabs the bait. Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks Mark

Dave honestly it was something that I thought would matter more than it seems too. At least on cranks it doesn't seem to matter as much. For my jerkbaits I plan to make them with the ability to add/remove weights. I am going to glue rivet nuts into the bottom of the lures and make my own screw weights. This will take care of the issues with making neutrally buoyant jerkbaits as well, I will make them at approx 60% of neutrally buoyant weight (estimate off the top of my head I will examine this in a dunk test) but the aim is internal weighting for a quick to slow riser, and I will have the ability to add weights to get them closer to neutrally buoyant. Again, this is an idea at this time but I think it should be doable. Your original comment on the 20% addition of weight, due to the volume increase, is what really made things easier and actually answered my question indirectly, made me think of teh answer. I never thought about the volume increase but you saved me many of head scratching days. As a starting point I was going to try and determine the final width of my lure, estimate based on epoxy thickness, and calculate the bill width, length and tie point location I would use accordingly to the dimensions of the lure. i.e I will dimension bills as a function of lure width and length, based on whether it will be a deep or shallow diver and use data from commercial type baits as starting points. For example Jakes, Grandmas, Shallow Raiders and others all have differnt lips and actions but are all minnow baits. So I will measure these lure dimensions and bill sizes/angles and take them into account when I develop the lips for my lure sizes. I figure this is as good of a starting point as there is, short of copying a commercial lure exactly which I prefer not want to do. Once my shop is finally set up at home, hopefully shortly in the new year I will get into making these. I will make sure I add any findings, good or bad in here to help others and pics as we progress. Happy New Year to all

Thanks Dave and Bob. There are two cases I am looking at. One is for crankbaits, these will be floaters and in this case it was moreso the thickness I was thinking about. I was going to try to estimate what bill size I wanted by estimating the final thickness of the lure. I also am aiming for approx 20% of the bait above the waterline and was just trying to account for the epoxy. I also thought the epoxy would be thicker 3+ mm which I would think has more effect on teh lure. I think this is probably getting ahead of where I should be since I have yet to turn out a hardbait. I will also be attempting dive/rise jerkbaits and will aim for neutral buoyancy in those, or close to it so the weight would become more of an issue in this case. I am not specifically aiming for any "set" thickness for the epoxy, but based on bob's comment I better look into the tutorial.

Hey Dave, although originally I was a little confused myself once I though about it in terms of buoyancy I figured out what you meant. In my view your expaination is very good. I never thought of the added volume perspective. A simple way to look at it is also you are not just adding weight but also volume. Thanks for the advice it is greatly appreciated.

Hi all, I am new to the site and hard bait building. Last year I started lure making but stuck to easier lures like bucktails, spinnerbaits and some other hair/fur type lures. This off season I have decided to try my hand at some deep and shallow crankbaits and some dive/rise jerkbaits. These are for personal use only, I may give the odd one to a friend but I have no intention of selling them. I have spent the last several months reading a lot of material, includign a lot on here, and trying to figure out my plan of attack and have finally come up with the following process. 1) I will be using primarily cedar, western red and eastern white. Both easily accessible and reasonably priced. At some point I may try some different types of wood but chose cedar as a start. 2) I will seal the bait with a couple dips in sanding sealer. Sand with fine paper after it dries. 3) Apply a coat of primer paint. 4) Paint the lures with acrylics. To start we will just be using brush on paints, we used to paint for a hobby so we have the paints and brushes etc. In the future we will look into an air brush. 5) Insert dive bib on crankbaits or dive tail in the jerkbaits. I will be using 5 or 6mm Lexan for my dive bibs, and I have dive tails from lure parts online. 6) Coat with a couple layers of ETEK as the clear coat. I will build a turner. I will be using primarily through wire construction, by cutting the lures down the centerline and glueing the two halves back together once the internals have been put in the correct places. I may build a couple with screw eyes just as test specimens. I have found the template for the Grandmas so as a starting point I was going to try some minnowbait style lures, thickness of baits will likely vary from the originals so I plan to modify my lip accordingly, I acknowledge this will be a trial and error process. As it will be with all crankbaits in determining the best bib shape, angle, size, line tie location etc. With all this said there are still a couple of factors I am racking my brain around and was hoping some of the builders here could provide some insight. Q1) Any recommendations on a decent primer paint to use. I am not sure I even need this, maybe a white base coat will be sufficient over the sealed bait. If I need primer specifically I would prefer a brush on or dip as I do not have the room to be spraying aerosol paint cans. Q2) What is the avg thickness or weight addition of the clear coat when using ETEK. I will likely do 2 layers, more if needed, and I know this will vary by bait size and builder but is there a general thickness I could use to try and estimate the weight I will be adding with the clear coat. Off the top of my head I was thinking around 3 mm additional thickness, on each side. In my view determining the weight addition by the epoxy, which on a 10-14" bait can be a few oz, is more important than the actual increase in dimensions. I figure the extra size can be overcome with a bigger bib, only time will tell with some trial and error. Q3) Has anyone ever discovered any type of relationship between bib and lure size, they are willing to share. For example the minnow baits I am attempting will be similar in shape to Jakes, Grandmas, Shallowraiders etc. However my bait width/thickness will vary from these, especially until I figure out the additinal thickness I add from the clear coat and paints. I intend to use similar weighting locations as the named baits do, I found the Grandma templates online, and I will adjust the bib size according to the lure width (potentially add more width on shallow divers and more width and possibly length on the deeper divers). I plan to use linear extrapolation to come up with the starting bib sizes. Any insight would be greatly appreciated. I will post any findings I make as I embark on this adventure. Thanks Mark