crankbait bills

[fishon-son]

for those who make there own bills how are you doing it..sanding? or punch and die..

[BobP]

Guess it depends on how many of one lip you need.  A die isn't easy or cheap.  As a hobby builder I use templates to draw the shapes on polycarbonate or circuit board, then do a rough cut with straight cut Wiss  metal shears followed by sanding down to the exact shape with a Dremel tool and a fine grit sanding cylinder.  Then buff the edges with  a felt cylinder.  The shears easily cut the 1/16" polycarbonate and the 1/32" circuit board I use.  It takes me about 10 minutes per lip.  The critical part is having an accurate template.  I use a freeware CAD program to draw the shape and print it out.  This insures a symmetrical template.  Then I trace the template onto more durable clear plastic.  This also gives you a library of templates over time to choose from for future lips.

[Travis]

Pretty much the same as Bob.  I stack mine however and do a bunch at once.  

I cut my lips out then use superglue to glue them.  The protective cover sticks well enough to allow 8 to 10 lips at once.  Once I shape them they just peel apart ready to go.  I usually hold the stack and use a random orbit sander or the Ridgid oscillatin edge belt/spindle sander.  Have used files also in the past and dremel.   I polish the edges with a felt wheel or use a fine grit sand paper followed by a  flame polish.

Edited August 11, 2017 by Travis

[mark poulson]

If you use a paper template glued to the bill material as a pattern, try folding the template in half first, and using a ball point pen to make a center line on the fold.  It will help you keep the bill aligned when you glue it into the bait.

[gliders]

I cut on bandsaw then final shape on bench disc sander...glider

[littleriver]

 

Thanks to Gene, I have been safely making exact duplicates in seconds this way for years now. 

[SLT785]

Checkout Greg Vinall on Youtube, he has some good info. I got a pdf on crankbaits lips from him, can't figure how to copy to here.  I open his template of the lip i want, zoom to out on one and screen capture it, copy it into a word processor. I resize to the size i want then duplicating it to fill up the page making my own template. then print it out, cut out what i want and tack glue it to the lexan (its protective cover) and cut it out on my bandsaw and sand the edges, then wipe the edges with acetone. Here's a copy of an original. He offered these for anyone to use.