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Loosen knob (A with pink allow in picture) Spray WD-40 or any rust dissolving type lube like "Liquid Wrench" from the upper side of the arm adjuster (B with yellow allow in picture) Let it soak overnight at least. Let it sit longer is better. Gently tap the top of adjustment arm (C with green allow in picture) with a small hammer (Do not hit hard!) Tap tap tap... It should flee the arm and the whole finger thingy become adjustable up and down. I will not online for a while from now... I hope above helps.

Here is where you would adjust the feet from @Go55 inamge

Once you loosen the knob should be able to push the drop foot down to the table if needed. If it isn't raising and lowering it is frozen in place and you need to free it. Should be no need to add a 3/4 pine table to it. Don't bend the fingers... use larger pieces of wood or make a few waste blocks and use double sided sticky tape.

Welcome lots of knowledge around here when in doubt run a search or ask You may not get the right answer all the time but you will get some great opinions lol

I've found that if I use just one screw eye/hinge pin attachment on my two piece wake baits, I don't have to worry about making the two sections float level.

Harbor Freight for the win!

Wagner 2-Temp (Amazon for ~$21) has been good for me. I like having the lower temp for heating up smaller jigs

The best wake I've ever fished was/is the CL8 baits Baby Possum. It has a wide, flat bottom, a mostly flat top and a reverse cut joint that is fairly tight. It's lip depth below the bait is about equal to the baits heighth and the lip is very close to the front of the bait. It sits pretty low in the water, with just the top 3/16 inch sticking out of the water. The waking version weighs right at 4 oz's but fishes extremely heavy, like it weighs 6 oz and can wear you out even with the right rod. It seems to be a small compact package that is very dense. I've had great luck with the fish just crushing the bait, especially around wood. My wake making experience has been primarily with resin baits. When making a 2 pc bait, I use the 60/40 guideline, 60 being the front section. 50/30/20 for a 3 pc bait, with a short tail. When I draw out a design, I always include a drawn in tail, This will help me judge the size the tail section will wind up being and the overall shape of the bait. I've made a couple the with even shorter tail section on a two pc and the tail section will slap pretty hard back and forth. Also take into account for the length of the joint cut itself. Cutting certain angle joints can have the effect of shortening the front section while lenghtening the second section, creating unbalanced proportions. You want the front section and the lip to drive the back section with it's movement, not have the back section hump the front. See a lot of new glides out there with a longer tail section than front, makes for a weird swim. I've made a couple myself. I use 1/8 Lexan/Poly for lips, never needed anything bigger, even on 10-12 inch wakes. I have a tablesaw blade that cuts a 1/8th inch kerf so the lips will slip right in the slot. When testing, I'll cut different shaped and length lips and wrap with blue painters tape around the inserted section to keep the test lip tight. In a wake I want a hard back and forth slap not a rolling type swim. Taller wakes don't make for great bait IMHO, I think they tend to roll more and that kills some of the tail action. Different if you have a rat type tail, they tend to create good action behind most style baits. Wakes can act dramatically different if the linetie is on the nose or under the nose towards the lip like a squarebill CB. I think a guy needs to try both positions to see how it affects your bait. AZsouth helped me troubleshoot a wake bait I was making. Made a bunch of adjustments. We moved the lipslot forward, the linetie back and I moved the joint spacing back and forth. We finally found right combination of those factors the bait came alive and had a great consistant swim. You just have to work to find the right combo for your particular bait. It was like the timing of the sections and the tail movements were finally right and moved in unison and made great sounds. That one looked like a Frankenbait but swam good. Make sure each section floats level with each other, independent of each other, so the joint{s} won't bind. *90 lip will help keep the bait waking and on the surface. Kick the lip out some and it will start to crank down. I make a couple resin wakes with no added weights in the bottom. Just some solid resin in the bottom and the hardware, MB mix up top. I would think that wood wakes will need some lead ballasting. This had been some of my experiences, hope it helps...

I made a couple wake baits loosely based on the Slammer. It was a pretty simplesrylewake to start with. I used about a 90° lip angle and it worked pretty well. Now I'm working on some to make with more detail and a realistic profile. It's about 3" long. I'm planning on using 2 joints and bristle fins. At some point I'm going to try the hinge style joint, but I'm working with twisted joints.