fatfingers

Very cool story, Woodie!

I haven't fished a commercially sold bait for about 5 years now. I fish only my own baits and I enjoy changing the variables that I can control because I build my own lures. I also enjoy experimenting with the physics with which we are presented when dragging a piece of carved and painted wood through the water. Do they work? You bet they do8O8O:oooh:: http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a21/vc1111/Insurancepics011-1.jpg

Over the years, I've found a half dozen chrome paints that are very impressive...until you put a coat of epoxy over them. Epoxy dulls them all.

Dipping will be practical for only a very few styles of bait. If you make cranks, you'll either have the lip attached, or the lip slot exposed at that stage of the process. From all that I've read on several different boards, over a period of about 5 years, all information leads to what seems to be a trade-off between yellowing and hardness. If you want no yellowing, you sacrifice hardness to one degree or another, and there seems to be no way around that. While we could ask for the moon, the current status of the chemistry and physics involved in the process of manufacturing the stuff seems to be the primary limitation. I know of at least a dozen or so builders who have previously contacted manufacturers directly with copious information. From what they've posted, they've been offered one version of the aforementioned trade-off or another. They've been offered different concoctions but the trade-off remains. Ideally, there would be zero chance of yellowing, maximum hardness, no propensity towards chipping, and the stuff would go on as easily as Devcon 2 ton epoxy (or even easier), be less sensitive to gathering dust, have no static charge after mixing, and would cure faster and require less time on the spinning wheel and lower chance of sagging during the curing process. Wishing is the easy part...

Shade, the lip slot can be cut while the wood is square and prior to turning it in the lathe. You'll need some practice to determine how deep to cut it prior to spinning and shaping. Try about 35 degrees to start and experiment from there for baits with round bodies (lathe-made). Generally speaking (very generally...as diemai said there is a lot to lip and slot angles), round lips have more action than square lips. But...that is not to say that round is always more desirable than square. Square lips are more dependable, meaning you usually have less chance of failure with a square lip. Square lips have a tighter wiggle or wobble and believe it or not on certain baits they will dive deeper than a round lip of the same length...but not always...and that is where only experimentation and experience will help answer your questions with certainty. What species will your baits be targeting?

Those are really sharp, Pete.