jamie

Ive used 2 liter bottles cut into squares

been doing this method for years, works great. Make a jig to hold your bait like paul did in his videos. You get a nice straight slots

Ive never made gliders that small but ive made a boat load of small musky 4 1/2" to regular sized gliders. I like making dropp belly gliders and in my opinion neutral buoyancy makes the best gliders. Mass determines weight to find this , weight being wood, paint, epoxy, hooks, ballast, and leaders if used. What ever the mass of the bait you will need to find the proper weight to achieve what I call hang time in the water. Using less dense wood likecedar require more balast to in the belly , while oak baits needs less ballast to atchieve hang time. When using more dense woods like oak or maple the weight of the bait is distributed more evenly throughout the whole bait and ballast is used for stability not for the drive of the bait. Its not the lead that drives the action but the total weight of the bait. If you take the cedar bait with the same mass as the oak bait , the weight of the bait is the same but one bait will overweighted in the belly region the bait. As we all here know that if youover weight any bait you kill action, now your just pulling a stick through the water. If you take a balsa crankbait and over weight the plug you just taken away the balsas action. Wood has a natural action in water and over balasting baits in my opinion kills the woods action.lve made glider s that will walk the dog under water with just reel movements not sweeping the rod. Im not saying that you cant make gliders out of less dense woods but in my opinion theres more work useing them and there is a greater room for error. You can turn a glider into a pullbait fast by improper weighting. Also length of the bait will determine width of the bait. Longer the bait the wider the bait needs to be. I dont know if this made any sense, because I tend to ramble.

Mark I do same thing and I bought mine at gander mountain. I will score the lead with a hack saw blade in a few spots so when glueing the glue graps the lead a little better. Maybe overthinking things but in my mind it makes sense.

Dave its been awhile since ive been online, but when I saw this thread I almost fell out of my chair. In the past we talked about your bullrider and this secret was one I didnt think you would give up. Im glad you did and with a brilliant explanation.

Must hobby stores have a fine tip paint pen in different colors (gold silver) , thats what I use.

My findings smaller the bait the more even both sides need to be. Making musky baits you can get away with murder and eye ball one is great, but you guys who make those micro baits ,shaving wood off one sideof your baits you need to mirror the other side. Errors seem to magnify with smaller baits

I always use foil tape for my chrome baits . Makes a shiny flashy side and easy to apply.

Just wanted to to say hello to some old friends and say hello to some new ones. Its been awhile since ive been on line due to lifes obsticles. Just need to come back for some needed group therapy (tackleunderground) and get back to making some baits. I always found that lifes problems seems to disappear for an hour or two when there is saw dust on the floor .

Pete this guy has way too much time on his hands.

Thanks for the link....

Im looking into making some planner boards that will handle muskie sized baits. I know that I could buy these boards, but what fun is that!!! I know little to nothing about the design of these boards and im looking for some help in the design. Any plans or web site that will help in the build will be very helpful. Thank you all in advance for any help. Jamie

I will tell you if it ever happens. Jamie

+1

I coat with etex before painting. Makes a smooth surface with no grain. The down side is the wait to paint.

Mark, sorry to hear about your cold wet winter in SoCal. I guess you had to start useing sunblock 15 instead of sunblock 30. Deimai ,great vid. Jamie

You can also keep adding weight to the baits spine to fine tune the roll action.When I test to see what kind of action I need I will super glue split shot in different size and different weight along different parts of the bait to see what and how much weight I need to place later in the bait.You can snap of the weight with pliers if you need to take them off. Take pencil and paper and document each reaction to each peice of weight you add, you will learn alot. I learned more about weight placements in one evening doing this than, than I did in years of making baits in the beginning. Jamie

add some weight to the spine of the bait.