Skeeter

Tim has always been up there. You can't deny the tallent that Tim and Jeff have for making those baits. He has been an independent that has made it. I have allot of respect and admiration for that. Congratulations !! Skeeter

Mitcheal, You can cut your lips with 2 or 3 fluted carbide straight router bits. The problem with the bearing deal is that they don't make that type of bit with a bearing. You can probably get a custom made bit done though. It will run you around $200.00 for someone to make it for you. Along with a jig you will need to make up some kind of a guide for the jig as you make your cuts. Most glass shops cut polycarbonate with table saws equiped witb a carbide tip blade. However, I personaly wouldn't want to try and hold a piece the size of a lip while you cut it. If you make a jig to hold it then you will be wasting more time taking the lip out of the jig after each cut to line it up for the next cut. You could possibly make a jig where you could stack them and cut multiples at one time. Carbide blades are needed because cutting polycarbonate and that high rate of speed creates a tremendous amount of heat and the polycarbonate will melt and possibly seal itself again behind the blade. For sure the edges wouldn't be pretty. Injection molds are the best, but it will run you about $5,800.00 to have a two lip mold made. Then you will have to pay someone to shoot them for you. There are three ways to go for the average guy to make lips. Cut them like you are now, have a press and punch made to stamp them out, or take them to a laser engraver and have them cut by laser. The press will run somewhere between $200 and $350. You will have to get a machine shop to make the punches for your different lips. A punch for the press will run somewhere between $75 and $150 per lip design. I checked on a laser engraver and he wanted aroud 35 cents a lip. All of these are ways to get the job done quicker. But consider this...... With a punch once you get the hang of it, will give you about 20 lips a minute. In 5 min. you can cut 100 lips. Now will you have 100 bodies made to put them in? For me the cost doesn't justify buying one for myself. On my scroll saw I can cut about 10 lips in 10 minutes. I have had allot of practice. Most of the time I don't have to work with them after I have cut them. For now I make less than 500 baits a year. Therefore, I still cut them by hand. Skeeter

I get my polycarbonate from www.lairdplastics.com The site is not that much help so I would give them a call at 800-610-1016. Once you get the folks on the phone they are a pleasure to deal with. I got a 4'X8' sheet of .060 polycarbonate cut into 2'X2' squares shipped for around $50.00. Believe me when I say that it will last you a long time. You can get allot of lips out of a sheet that size. Skeeter

What everyone here has to remember is that Tim has been doing this for allot of years. He has already been through enough failures and probably still has some. There are some on the site that already paint really really well. Their paint jobs couldn't get much better in my opinion. We will help you with getting started, but the rest is practice and tallent. So............ "Get-R-Done" Skeeter

NEbassangler, Coley is right on the money. Great painting requires work and practice. It's that simple. If you need help on what types of paints and stuff there is allot of information on the site about paint. Do a search and you will get allot of returns. Wood prep, sealing, priming, thinners, paint, airbrushes, and my specialty Clear Coats are all on here. If you have any doubts on anything bring it here to the board and you will get an answer. As you can see by Kellures reply, there is a friendly bunch of tallented people here on this site that are always willing to help. This is the place...... we Get-R-Done!! Skeeter

Mags, Most flat baits are either 1/2 or 3/8 inch thick. What you are looking for is white cedar. This is what Poes made their baits out of. Do flat baits first and get the hang of it. Round baits are harder to make because of keeping the body even on both sides and keeping everything straight. Zoom baits are made of balsa. All of them. Personally I would work with the balsa first. It is easy to work with and sand. Hardwood is fine but it is much harder to work with in getting out imperfections. Hardwood is also more difficult to weight. Balsa is very forgiving with weighting. Balsa will still float with a little too much weight where hardwood will sink. Water temperature will also affect a hardwoods ability to float more than balsa. Cold water is denser than hot. Therefore, a bait might float well in 85 deg. water but slowly sink in 50 deg. water. This is all stuff that you will learn with time as you continue to build baits. I personally use 150 grit sandpaper for most of my shaping. Then you can use 220 or finer to get it real smooth if you need to. I would invest in a Dremel tool. I find mine invaluable. You can rough shape hardwood baits with it. It does a pretty fine job with a sanding drum. For balsa all you need is the sandpaper. This site has allot of information on it from some really tallented people. Use the search option for topics and if you can't find your answer, throw it up here on the board. You will definitely get an answer or pointed in the right direction. Skeeter

No !!!!!! it was not enjoyed by all because I wasn't there!!!!!! But I sure would have liked to have tasted Coleys cooking. Even though these guys look pretty shaddy, I'm sure I would have had a good time. I spent time with Charlie at the Bass Masters Classic Outdoor Show in Charlotte. If the rest of these characters are as nice as Charlie is, then we are all missing something. I am so glad that the site has promoted lasting friendships for many of us. It is a wonderful thing to have these things in life. So with that said I guess you Tn. boys better get ready, because I'm comming over the mountains in the spring. And I mean you better get ready because I'm not kidding. Skeeter

AlamOso, Nice tutorial. Thanks for sharing it with us. Skeeter

As a general rule flat baits usually had a tighter wiggle than the round baits. This was due to the lip used in the bait. You are right that a flat bait can be made to wiggle the same as a round bait. It is all in the lip design. I also agree that the vibrations put out by a flat bait is stronger simply because it is a flat surface doing the pushing of the water. But like you all have said, sometimes the fish want something more subtle. I really do believe that you could use flat baits all year round. You can adjust the wiggle the bait has with the lip design. Therefore, you could make a "finese" flat bait. I think the reason most baitmakers don't have these type of baits is because they generally just copy lips that are already in existing crankbaits. They copy these lips and put them in the bait bodies that they have made. I play allot with lip design and angle. It is something that I enjoy. I have failures, but when I get it right I have a bait that no one else has. Many baitmakers can't handle working on a bait for hours and have it fail. It is heart breaking. But that is the only way to learn sometimes. There seems to be something about flat crankbaits that turn some fishermen off. It is different than what most are use to. But I love them and fish them year round. I have caught more than my share of fish on them. Skeeter

CC, Forget the eyes.... you do some excellent paint jobs. Anywhere you would put the eyes on those baits would look good. Skeeter

Go to a glass shop and ask for either polycarbonate or Lexan. They are the same thing. They can cut you a small amount. I would get a piece that is 2 ft. square. It won't cost you much and you can do allot of lips from that one piece. Skeeter

Herman, Personally I like them both. I do mine like the ones in your first picture. But the one below looks good too. So for me I guess it is 6 of one and a half dozen of the other. Skeeter

For a 400 out of white cedar I would try between 1/8 and 3/16 of an oz. For the 300 I would use 1/8oz. As far as cutting one up...... I would. If you really took your time you would have a profile to trace and have the exact weight ammount and placement. Since it is balsa... you could make these things all day long once you got the hang of it. Heck $18.00 for R&D is cheap. Heck..... send it to "Dr. Blackjack", he is the best autopsy guy in the business. Skeeter

Cody, I saw one of those articles also. Guy Eaker is the one that carried the sharpie around with him. He said that a fellow told him about the kill spot. After that he said that he draws quite a number of spots on his bait to get the fish to hit it. I don't know if you should get that carried away. But I do believe that it works. Skeeter

My flat baits are a little larger than most. Over 90% of the fish that I hook on these baits have the center hook in the mouth and the rear hook in their cheek. What I believe is happening is that the fish is hitting the dot from the side. Since the dot is above that center hook then they get that in their mouth. When I set the hook then I believe that straightens out the bait swinging the rear hook into their cheek. The hookup on these fish is real good. I can count on one hand the number of fish that I have lost on one of my crankbaits over a 4 year period. If you ask me, that is pretty darn good. Skeeter

More than likely it is the mixing. Optimum temp for devcon is 70-75 deg. For every 5 deg below 70 you will need to spin the lure an extra 10 min. or so. Even at that cool temp is should have been dried within 24 hrs. Skeeter

CC, I sent a copy of the pictures to Calvin along with your questions through email. I will let you know what he has to say. Skeeter

I really like the term "kill spot". That is actually what it is. From my experience I can tell you that I truely feel that the fish zeros in on this dot when it makes the hit. That is why I put mine right above the center hook. I also use a fairly large dot. From studying the way the fish are hooked on my baits, I truely believe that they target this dot. Skeeter

Scoop, From what you are telling me, the Z4 is weighted in the old style. If it is done right, then it should be a pretty good bait. I make my hook hangers by taking the lead and drilling a hole through the center of it. I take my wire and bend it in a U shape and run the two ends through the hole. I bend the wire over the end of the lead and then epoxy the weight in. Like I said before, it depends on the size of the bait and what it is made of that determines the amount of weight used under the hook hanger. If you will tell me the size of the lure and what it is made of then I can give you an amount of weight to start with. CC, The baits in the first picture are of the Tapp style. None of those baits to my knowledge is a true Tapp. It appears to me that you have a batch of baits that was actually made by Calvin. To my knowledge, this is rare. Calvins? thing for years has been modifying Bagley and Rapala balsa lures. His niche has been lips. He really likes to play with different lips in baits. He also likes to play with weights. If you would like, I can try and contact him and ask him about the baits. The signature on the lip in the other picture is the common style of signing baits in the Carolinas. However, many have adapted this style since. The Zoom baits are done this way also. I see the Perry bait that you are talking about. I have seen these baits before, but I am not familiar with the individual. What can you tell me about him? The Sweet Pea that you are wondering about is a Zoom bait also. It is a balsa made lure. As far as I know, all Zoom WEC baits are balsa. You can see all of these baits at www.bubbajackstackle.com This is the only place that I know of were you can view all of the WEC baits. Skeeter

The fish won't care. But the guy paying $20 for it will. So fish the lure and enjoy it. Skeeter

Your new process will work fine. A good quality wood putty is very strong. Skeeter

FF What do you think of the HOK paints. I have checked out the site before and have thought about ordering some. Also, where can I check out the paint from Japan. I have talked to some about it. But I can't seem to find a site to check it out. I know that a fellow named ITO that owns Megabass uses a paint that costs $3000.00 a lb. to spray some reels from Diawa. Skeeter

Corey, It depends on the size of the lure and what it is made of. But to give you an idea I will start with about 1/8 oz. for a 400 Poes. I have my own way of doing this. But the standard way most use is to epoxy the lead in and then test it in the water. If there is too much lead then drill out some of the lead and repeat the process untill the bait sits the way you want it. Here is another tip. If you use Devcon, then you can mix paint in with it so that the hole does not show up so much. If you have a yellow bait, then add some yellow paint into the Devcon as you mix it and then place it in the hole. After you get this mixture in and leveled off then spin it kinda quickly for about 3 min. and it will level out pretty smooth. With some practice you will hardly be able to notice the hole. Skeeter

scoop, Normally you will put a weight right where the belly hook hanger goes. The chest weighting comes in between the belly hook hanger and the lip. Many drill an hole in the chest and place a weight in there and seal it in. Fritts started this whole thing for the public. However, hard core crankbait throwers here in the Piedmont have been doing it since the 80's. This is where David learned to do it. As far as I know a man by the name of Calvin Johnson came up with it for Bagley DBIIIs they were modifying. He is the one that taught me how to do this. His process is tedious. It really takes time to do the fist batch or so. I have even added steps to his process. But after you do enough it comes a little quicker. But it is still a bait by bait process. This is why I really don't care for mass produced baits that are done this way. However Rapala does make the best mass produced bodies that I have seen. They use a machine that is as big as a dumpster to cut their bodies from. It is an extremely accurate machine. Bagley and Poes are just all over the place. Their bodies are very inconsistant. Some are just a plain mess. Hardwood baits are difficult to do. I sometimes takes just a little bit of lead to send them sinking to the bottom. Where most guys fail, especially with the Poes is that they chest weight the bait and then take it to the water. They crank it down 3 - 5 ft. and then watch the bait slowly float up. If that happens then they are convinced that they have it right. There are two problems here.... most don't have a clue to the proper angle that the bait should have sitting in the water. Second, what they don't understand is that as the bait goes deeper pressure is exerted on the outside of the bait just like it does on a submarine. It may slowly float up at 5ft. but actually slowly sink once the bait passes 15 ft. Since most cannot see what the bait is doing at 15ft. they think that they have it right. Water temp. can also play a big part in this process also. This is why many of these types of baits are done with balsa. Balsa is extremely forgiving. When I do hardwood baits with chest weighting, sometimes I have to readjust the weight that is used in the belly. One of the biggest misunderstood phrases in crankbaits is the word "ballanced". Calvin and some of the other "old timers" here always threw the word at me but never would explain it. After 4 years I believe that I know the answer. It is not that you can ballance a bait on a pin head or something. Rather it is a bait that has a straight body and is evenly proportioned, all of the hardware lines up, and most of all has the right action when the bait is stopped. Take a DBIII and crank it down in a pool. Stop the bait and watch it. I will bet that the bait will spiral to the top. This is because the bait is too lightly weighted. Not that it won't catch fish.... because it will. But the bait can be made to perform much better. This is just a piece of the puzzle. It is all part of a long learned process. This is why baitmakers that really know their stuff charge allot of money for one of these baits. It takes allot of knowledge and time to make one that is perfect. I know of one baitmaker that will charge $50 for one of these lures. Personally it takes me between 5 and 10 hrs. to make one from start to finish. Everybody wants one. But when I give them a price they grab there chest. They want me to spend hours making their bait and then they expect to pay 6 bucks for the lure. I only know of about a half dozen people that can do this right. To find someone that really knows what they are doing is hard. To learn on your own takes allot of hours in the shop and on the water. Skeeter

The tacky spots are from not mixing thoroughly. The best way is to recoat over the top of what is there. The metheod with the tape is used for holes in a Devcon finish after it cures. It also fixes cracks. Skeeter