Vodkaman

I loved Rowhunter's post, very funny and a few of the recent novice posts have been a bit naive to say the least, but; JW - I disagree. I say ask away. It is difficult to search when you don't even know what you are searching for. Lure building is quite specialist and the subject is full of special words and phrases that are meaningless, confusing and difficult to comprehend. New member's point of view - Anyone who walks through the TU front door, has already made the decision that they are going to make lures. They are enthused, tried to read a bit but got nowhere. It takes a lot of information to build your first successful lure and they need all that information now. Old member's point of view - I opened up TU, pressed new content to catch up on the day's threads and it was just full of SOS (Same Old Sh..). It's not fair, what am I not paying my money for! I want something interesting to read, something that I can get my teeth into. I want a whole page of interesting, virgin (never been asked before) questions that I know the answers to. Well, on a good day, there might be two or even three threads that grab my interest, or I may go a week of nothing. It is certainly not because I know everything, in fact, more than half of the day's threads are subjects that I know very little about and I am just not in the mood for taking on new knowledge today. After skipping past the painting threads, topcoat threads, Knock-off threads, sales threads, powder and spinner threads, mold problem threads, I am down to threads that I have already read, which means don't bother scrolling any further. So I scroll back up to see if I missed anything - nope. I decide to check out the new guy threads, to make sure they are being serviced and maybe throw a bone, but they are well covered with good advice. The one thread that is under serviced and tempts me to answer, has asked such a broad question that I could spend two days answering and I only wanted to donate half an hour. Note to new guys - write down on a piece of paper, everything you don't understand or don't know. Break it down into small, individual questions. Try a search, but if you get nowhere or don't understand, then post a new thread with your SINGLE question. This will only take a member a couple of minutes to answer and you should get at least half a dozen answers to choose from. From the special words and phrases used in the answers, you should be able to go back to the search function and be more specific in your searches and glean a lot more information. Note to old guys - If someone asks for the world on a plate, don't just tell them to do a search or go away and learn it the hard way, that is just inconsiderate, unfriendly, not helpful and rude. I got enough of that attitude when I joined. Pick a small part of the question and give a short answer. Do a quick search yourself and post a couple of links to the same answer to show that the information is out there. Giving the search words that you used to get the information is a powerful way to help. If everyone was forced to go away and search and learn the hard way, we would have NOTHING to read! Dave

Diemai - another masterpiece of a video. Dave

I remember the first lure that I was happy with. Got to the bank, ready to hit some trout and perch. First cast, the bail arm flipped, the line snapped and that baby sailed the air like you would not believe. I very nearly snapped my rod and threw it in the river, but managed to resist. Dave

Diemai - the pointed lip does make sense for stability, but as you say, reduced wobble action. Dave

The red signature text at the bottom of my post is the truth for me at least. I had never fished lures until 2007 when I was in Sweden. I had to fish close to a sunken tree to catch anything and I was losing hand-fulls of spinners every evening after work. Lures in Sweden are very expensive, but the biggest problem was that I was unable to get to a store until the following weekend. I figured; I am an engineer, I can do this. So I bought some brass plate, peen hammer, soldering iron, snips and all the other bits and set to - it wasn't as easy as I thought it was going to be. At this time I was introduced to TU by a friend in the office at Volvo. I then changed over to wood, as it was a bit easier to work with. More money spent. The problem was that my accommodation was a very small apartment, but I managed. TU members could only tell me to read and build and learn by trial and error. No one could answer my question, 'How does it work'. It then became my mission to figure it all out. I made a lot of progress, but I am still learning. Still a lot to be figured out. Dave

X2 - one change at a time, or you will learn nothing. Dave

Yes, Building hard baits is a totally different mentality to soft baits, it is a labor of love, affection and pride. I am not of course speaking of me personally, as I consider it an ongoing challenge to design a presentable bait that can be manufactured in the minimum time. I would probably be more suited to the soft bait arena. My build time from start to first dip, if I build ten at a time, is around 20 minutes per bait for a crank and about 90 minutes for a 4 piece swimbait. My baits are not for selling, I rarely fish and I do not paint. For me, it is all about testing and learning, this is my hobby as an engineer. However, the baits do catch fish. Dave

A lures swim characteristics change with speed and this is a prime example. You design your lure to work perfectly at say 2 cranks per second, but when you increase the speed to 4 or 5 cps it is a completely different lure. The reason - there is a balance between the lip and the body and the fulcrum is the tow eye. You are balancing the water forces across the lip against those across the body. Because of the sharp edged lip, the water forces increase more with speed than they do across the body, so the balance changes and the lure swims more nose down. The best you can do is to adjust the design balance to prevent the lure reaching the critical point at high speeds, but this might compromise your perfect swim at the lower speeds. The adjustment is all about this balance: you can lengthen the body, move the tow eye forward or shorten the lip. I suggest you experiment with one of the lures that blows out and trim the lip back gradually until you get what you want. A battery Dremel is great for this kind of waters edge work. Dave

They actually have a special tool for collecting the urine, called a KILIUTAQ urine scoop. It is a curved metal plate with a blunt edge and a wooden handle. It is used to scrape the babies soiled nappy or bed - The Inuit people have a tool for everything. Dave

An excerpt from: Fish Skin as a Textile Material in Alaska Native CultutresProcessing Fish Skins For those who find the time to process and sew fish skins, they can attest that the time-consuming process requires patience and skill. After removing the fish head, tail, and entrails, the meat is separated from the skin, and the remaining fatty parts are scraped from the skin using a dull ulu, a spoon, bone implement, or seashell. Care has to be taken to remove all of the flesh without puncturing the skin. Historically, the skins would be soaked in urine for one or two days to remove excess oils. According to Rita Blumenstein, originally from Nelson Island, urine from an unweaned baby was preferred for this purpose. Dave

Tony - Thanks for those very nice words. Time is a problem at the moment as I am designing an electric vehicle. Prototype build has started and production is just around the corner. as the sole designer on the 4 man team, it is a mad rush and I am at the computer 16 hours a day, working and sleeping is all I have time for. Dave

Looks great, good job. Dave

Gino - yes, the bigger the bait, to more chance you have of a suspender. When I was messing with Archimedes and suspenders, I arrived at 1/200th of the final weight is the difference between a slow float and a slow sink. So if you are working with a 1/2 oz lure, the fine tuning has to be less than 0.07 grams or less than .0025 oz. In terms of wire, this is 3cm of 0.5mm dia wire. If your final weight is 3.5 oz, the fine tuning has to be less than 0.49 grams or less than .0175 oz. In terms of wire, this is 5.5cm of 1mm dia wire. Knowing this information and knowing the diameter of your lead wire, you could calculate the length of wire that represents this critical weight. I have added a lead slug weight calculator; this allows you to calculate the weight of a length of lead rod. If you put the wire diameter in here, it will work for wire too. Dave

Doc-Drew - I didn't actually tackle any Moms, but yes, basically it is all true, including the ex-wife bit. I had intended doing a report for TU, but gave it up. Dave

I think it is more rewarding to go 100% artificial, the true test of man Vs beast. Below is a dragonfly that I made. It certainly had the butterflies fooled. They were so angry! Dave

Good job on the video. I liked the safety aspect too, gets the message across. Dave

I did some reading on this a couple of years ago. I read an article about an Eskimo up in North Canada. Something about urine from breast feeding babies and stuff like that. It was very interesting and a good read. I decided to have a go myself. Persuading breastfeeding mothers to collect their baby's urine proved to be a bit of a stumbling block, especially with a language problem, so the fish skin had to settle for 50 year old urine fed on strong coffee. Of course, who should come to visit three days into the experiment, discovering a smelly bucket of three day old pee smelling of coffee and fish, but my exwife. When she asked about the half of fish floating in the bucket, I could not think of a good answer, so I told her that it wasn't mine, never seen it before. It was around about this time that I decided that it was not worth the hassle and dumped the bucket and its contents - far away. Dave

You could do it as two operations: 1 - Pour the legs flat, in a star shape, with a central clamp bulb. 2 - clamp the bulb in the bottom of the body mold and pour. Mold notes: A - The insert hole has to be just the tight enough to clamp the bulb, to prevent leakage when pouring. B - The body mold will have a dry cavity to accommodate the legs, allowing you to stand the mold up. C - The heat from the body pour would probably cause the legs to reset long. Even if it didn't, it would not matter. D - The legs will be a difficult pour. Certainly at least injection. I know vacuum forming would do the job. E - Might as well increase the number of legs while you are there. F - RTV would probably be best, but PoP would work too. I would go with PoP for experimenting, as these are both big molds. Dave

Excellent and relieved that I got the numbers right. I do have other spreadsheets that I built, that worked very well, but it just got out of hand. There were about 4 pages to it. The document stored a library of hardware, so you just selected what you wanted to use. Nothing had to be weighed more than once. You could design a completely new lure and not have to weigh anything. It also took account of the wood removed during drilling. Like I said, it got away from me and was never completely finished. Dave

Paul Adams is from my home town of Liverpool and is actually a member here too. Dave

S56 - yes it would. But, you could calculate the difference. I have written spreadsheets were you select sea or fresh water. This particular spreadsheet offered above is not going to get you close enough for this to be a concern. It is intended to show you the principle of the method and keep things as simple as possible. If enough interest was generated, I could certainly write something a lot more practical that will deliver neutral buoyancy. I have done this before and even posted a video. Unfortunately YouTube has trimmed all my earlier videos away, so it is no longer available. Probably still on my computer somewhere. Dave

Thanks Ben. Good point Mark. I have added the file to MediaFire, so you don't have to give up your email addy. Simply click this link and download anonymously. If you do try out the tools, please provide some feedback, either by posting here or PM me – thanks. Dave

Well done for doing your research and finding the Archimedes post. Rather than cloud this excellent subject with a lot of my technical BS, as a lot would call it, I have started a new post on the subject of calculating ballast. Dave

Calculating ballast is not difficult, but the key is knowing what the specific gravity (SG) of our material is. My previous post, 'The Archimedes Dunk Test' was about getting the SG information from a lure that was already shaped. Some find the Archimedes a tad complex and daunting, but if you are making your lure from a solid block of material, then there is a simpler method. I have put together a spreadsheet for you guys to have a look at and see what you think. Without getting into too much detail, this is what is involved: 1 - take a rectangular block of your material, measure length, height, width and weigh the block. Type the numbers into the specific gravity calculator on the spreadsheet. 2 - weigh your carved lure and enter the number into the SG calculator. 3 - weigh your hardware and estimate the weight of paint and enter the number into the SG calculator. 4 - decide what diameter ballast hole you are going to use and enter the number into the SG calculator. Result - the spreadsheet tells you the approximate length of lead required for neutral buoyancy. You then simply divide this length over however many holes you wish to install. This tool is only intended as an approximation. Because it does not take account of the wood removed when drilling the holes. You will probably end up with a slight sinker, but this is no different to strapping lead to your carved body and dipping in a bucket, you are still going to have to drill holes which will affect the result. The attached image shows that the spreadsheet comes in 3 sections; the SG calculator, ballast calculator, the third section are some extra conversion tools between imperial and metric, should you feel more comfortable with imperial numbers. At the bottom of the page are some simple instructions. Q - So, why go to this trouble? A – this method is a lot less trouble than having to seal your lure, cut the lead, tape it to your lure, fill a bucket of water, float and trim the lead until you get it how you want it. Q – I like the bucket method, so are there any other advantages? A – yes, you can play with the numbers; you can alter the SG numbers to see what the effect of a denser wood has on the length of ballast. You can try different hole sizes to find the ideal length of ballast that suits your installation. Unfortunately TU will not allow the spreadsheet to be uploaded, so if you wish to have a play with the spreadsheet, PM me your email addy and I will send you a copy. Dave

I can't give you any numbers as I was working by weight and not volume. I do know that I was adding way more than 100% by volume. Yes, the sludge becomes impossible to pour, but I solved that problem by injecting with a cake icing syringe. Yes, adding that much MB to your lure is going to weaken the resin but it wasn't that big of an issue. I accidentally dropped one onto a tiled floor and it snapped. I then dropped a few from the fourth floor of my apartment onto concrete and they all survived. The one that snapped was at the lip slot and there was no lip fitted. When you fish a lure, the nose is never going to hit the rocks first, plus the lip is glued and you have a top coat for additional integrity - I do not see this as a problem. Dave