RiverMan

Hey they look great, congratulations! I hope they run perfect for you! Jed

ty. Did you get the file out2llunge?

You did an amazing job on that Greg, that thing looks really real! I have only seen on burbot in my life and that was many yrs ago while in college. It looks very much like the bullheads we have around here.....great job! jed

Marc, Where are you referring to? Thx!

Out2llunge, I have been making some jerkbaits in the last couple of weeks too. I chose two different body styles, one similar to the pointer and another like a bait the Yozuri makes, both are your basic minnow shape tho. I have been weighting them at the balance point at the center of the body because this is where the lure seems to have the most action to it. I also like the way the bait sits level when at rest which should give it a very good profile from underneath. I might add tho that the pointer I have sits head down and the yozuri sits flat. jed

Agreed, look more than worthy of purchase to me as well, congrats! jed

It's interesting that you mention that Hoosier. I will keep this in mind for future baits. The other night I was testing some plugs in the bath-tub and experimenting with the tow-point location. Some of my minnow lures would go from not running at all to running perfectly by moving the tow point 1/4 of an inch!! The other thing I found was that the action of a balsa lure in the exact same form as cedar will have a completely different action, much more of a wiggle than a wobble. It also seemed to me (maybe it was just my imagination) that the balsa was much more easily tuned. I much preferred the action of the balsa for a minnow bait but do like the cedar for other reasons, primarily durability. The physics involved with crankbaits is quite amazing, much more than I ever realized goes into the design of a good lure. Jed

I'll check that Joe, thanks. Thanks for the clarification Dean. Jed

Great Job and good luck on your new business! jed..aka. RiverMan

South, I looked into some production molds a few months back and was quoted 7-10k....this is just the cost of the mold. After that you must find someone with the injection machinery capable of producing the parts for you.

Thanks Cody, I have tuned a thousand plugs but most I have are made of plastic. In this case I simply turn the eye on the threads one way or the other and don't worry about it. With the cedar I am using tho I wonder just how many times the wood could take the turns before it begins to weaken.....not a good thing. It sounds like brass is the deal. Jed

It's really not that bad, I did all of this in about 2 hours, most of which was coming up with the criteria I wanted to measure. The info I posted above only includes maybe half of what I chose to measure. Once this is done it only takes maybe a minute per bait. What I am thinking is that if we had enough information we could develop a "reference chart" for making baits. For example, say you wanted to build a minnow bait (jerk-bait) that is 65mm long and 15mm wide. You could pull out the trusty chart, find the length, the width, and follow these over to the appropriate bill angle, bill width, length, and tow-point. These values would probably not be "exacts" but rather a "recommendation" that falls within the center of a range of numbers tha have proven successful. This information could be developed for all types of baits, shallow, mid and deep runners. I'm confident that if I had the baits I could put together the chart. We could ask members here to post measurements for their baits but this would greatly increase the liklihood for error. If Wal-Mart would just let me get into all those baits they have or better yet, perhaps all of you could mail me your baits, I'll return them I promise, lol. One other thing that would be helpful is to take measurements of baits that won't work and see how if at all these baits fall outside of the range of measurements for baits that run...if that made sense. Many measurements/ratios and observations could be taken and added to the chart including "aspect at rest in water". Does the bait sit level, bill down, bill up, etc. All of these things would help the builder. So in theory, if a person developed a bait that hit the middle ground for all criteria in the chart, it would run, assuming of course good construction practices were followed, lip is straight, body even, etc. And, finally, a "troubleshooting" section would help builders identify potential problems when they see a bait roll, not wobble/wiggle, not dive, etc. Would be an interesting project to work on and potentially very valuable to us bait building guys. Jed

AlamSo, cool pic. You know if a person knew CAD I think it would certainly make sense to draw up your lures in this way. For the rest of us tho I don't see the advantage. I have virtually no drawing skills whatsoever but can easily sketch out about any crankbait shape I want in just a few minutes with some graphing paper. Most of us here are working with wood or wood prototypes which by design include much margin of error. Now if you plan to take your design to patent or to be machined for an aluminum mold and high production then sure the CAD would be great. Jed

That's what I wanted to hear, you are using Brass on the front so that it can be adjusted. Hmmm, well I don't have any brass eyes so might just have to use a wire on the front until I can get some. I know Chip and others like to use the wire but I find the wires and bill-making the least fun part of the whole plug-making process and would like to avoid them if possible. Thanks alot. Jed

To save some time I bought some screw eyes to try but wondering if others are using them for the line tie. If so, are you installing them without epoxy to allow for tuning? I am worried about not glueing the eye in as the cedar I am using is quite soft. Jed

I'm suprised the pvc tube didn't work for ya Clemmy, seems reasonable to me. I have a lathe but cannot really think of a way that it would help with this. I generally just use a flat file followed by sandpaper but you might be on to something, keep working at it!

Thank you!

Sebbass is exactly right, just add some more Devcon, you are putting it on too thin. I try to brush lengthwise on the bait but do what you must to get a good layer on the entire bait. Once you start to turn the bait check it for the first couple of minutes and brush out any of the missing/low spots. You can fix the baits you have with the spots by putting on another coat, no big deal. Jed

That's interesting, thanks BlackJack.

In an effort to better understand crankbait design I put together a spreadsheet last night. I thought some of you might be interested in my findings. I took various measurements of "minnow type" cranks to see if there were some definite parallels that could be drawn from one bait to the next which could then be taken to design and production of others. I would paste the spreadsheet here but it turns into a giant mess when I try and I am too lazy to fix the whole thing into neat columns. Anyway, here is what I did and what I found. What I did: I measured a total of 6 jerkbaits comprised of one Lucky Craft Pointer, one Bomber Long A, and 4 Rapalas. I would have liked to measure 20 more but this is what I had available to me. I took measurements with calipers to the nearest millimeter of body length, max width (side to side) and max girth (back to belly). I also took lengths of max bill width, and bill length. I determined bill angle with the use of a protractor using the center line of the bait as the constant parallel. With this info I also calculated values for body length divided by bill length and body width divided by bill width. I tried many other different ratios but could not see any consistent trends from these data and thus did away with them. I wouldn't bet my life on the measurements but they are close. What I found: 1. The bill angle on the baits (keep in mind these are minnow style shallow runners) varied from 38 to 50 degrees. 2. Bill Width on the baits varied from 10 to 15mm, bill length from 13 to 19mm. In all cases bill length exceeded bill width. 3. The tow-point for all of the baits I looked at was attached to the body (not the bill) and below the horizontal center-line of the bait. 4. Body width was always equal to or very near the bill width. In the case of the Lucky Craft Pointer for example these numbers were 12 and 11mm respectively. I think if a person had a hundred baits (or better yet 500) in front of them it may be possible to develop some very strong mathematical relationships for new baits saving us a considerable amount of time in the end. Of course there are many other variables to consider such as body material (plastic, cedar, pine, etc.), balast, wind direction, moon phase, etc., but it may be possible to find a range of constants for each of them. So after this what did I find out? Put together a bait, cast it out, and see if works, lol. Jed

Buteeeeful!

I don't understand BlackJack how drilling the wire at an angle will increase the liklihood that the bait "will hunt". Here is what I am thinking.......right or wrong. So long as the wire is drilled with an equal amount of wood on either side of it it seems to me it would make no difference whatsoever whether it was drilled with an upward angle, downward angle, or straight in. The wire weighs virtually nothing relative to the combined weight of the bait and components and would have no leverage on it until a fish is hooked. The wire would therefore create little or no influence on the bait so long as it is drilled in the center. I would think the outside position of the hook hanger and thus leverage point (with the weight of the split ring and hook) would have a greater influence than the angle of the wire. I would like to hear your thoughts in this regard. Thanks! Jed

I gotcha, sounds like you are using a table saw. I will modify this process to fit my bandsaw, sounds like a good deal, thanks. Have you had problems getting the lathed baits to dive and swim correctly? I have only made one to experiment with and the tow-point is turning out to be hyper critical. Jed

Can someone tell me how they make sure the lip slot is straight on baits that are lathed? Thought about cutting the slot before lathing but thought this would make things a bit tricky. I built a small jig that holds a finished bait for the correct angle but wondered if someone had come up with a better way. Thx. Jed

I found this searching through the old posts this morn, Splash had posted the link. Anyway, this would be a great one to add to the "tutorial links" along with the info Lincoya posted on bills. Here's the link: http://www.creativelure.com/lure_making.html