mainbutter

I just started doing this myself, and I HIGHLY recommend a scroll saw or a band saw. I picked up the cheapest band saw I could find, under $100. For all the money you can spend on this hobby, I'd say a cheap band saw was the most worthwhile investment. Other than that, I just use a utility knife with disposable blades for carving.

Dear god the head on that is massive! Gotta love them big esox! I love the unhooking pic!

I've been having a difficult time lately twisting wire. It's just physically tough! I just work with needlenose pliers right now, does anyone have a system or set of tools they find really make doing twisted wire of all sorts easy for them?

I've got a sunfish swimbait under construction and want to plan my paintjob for it. I'm not very talented at painting yet but I'd like to at least try to get a basic sunfish look out of this lure. Anyone want to help me out? Bluegill, pumpkinseed, whatever species of sunfish you have a paint scheme for I'd LOVE some help picking out what colors I'd want. p.s. a pre-emptive "you guys are all awesome, and thanks for all the advice/help!"

I have been using devcon 2 ton for sealing my wooden lures, but are other brands of epoxy just as good? I'm asking because it's very convenient to hit up the local home depot neaby, but really the only epoxy they carry is loc-tite.

I have some stainless steel screw eyes I ordered from a tackle supply store online, but was wondering if that was the sort of thing that hardware shops or somewhere else might carry? I checked home depot the other day, no luck. Otherwise I'll have to order more in not too long, I'll burn through 25 screws faster than I thought I would.

Sorry it took so long to upload, my computer had some issues and took a couple days to fix, but now I'm back up and running and can upload my pictures! Here's my very first attempt at a wooden lure, and my second attempt at tackle making, the first being some easy-peasy inline spinners. It doesn't swim great, but this was more an experiment in using tools than anything else. I think I might cheat a bit and just pop a lip on it to get some wonky action out of a slightly less-than-symmetrical lure with slightly less-than perfect weighting. I'm half excited about wonky abnormal action, I've often wondered how much imperfections might just be able to trigger a fish to strike. I tried out my airbrush for the first time as well, I picked up a lower end Iwata gravity feed, a compressor, and some createx, and tried my hand at doing a "severely wounded perch". This is pretty much my first time painting since 3rd grade, and my first time using an airbrush. I'm darn happy with how it turned out. Anyhoo, there's some pretty ugly through wiring, but it more than gets the job done. I wanted to make something tough enough to tangle with a 50'' musky, and I have full confidence in it in regards to holding together. Oh yeah it's carved out of basswood, entirely with basic hand tools and a dremel.. I decided it was more than worth it to invest in a cheap band saw simply because of all the time I'd save. The problems I've tracked down already are that I don't like the wide spacing between segments.. I thought I'd try it out to see how it looked and performed with a wider range of flexibility, but my next project will have segments much closer. Again, issues with weighting/symmetry/balance are present, and that will just take a little practice to learn how to do it right. I hope you guys think it's a decent job for a first-timer Now I just need to figure out this gallery thing..

I often fish with fluoro leader. HOWEVER, it is not for visibility reasons. I've taken to fishing with 6-8 inches of 25lb triple fish fluoro leader if there's a chance I'm going to run into a big toothy critter while casting around for bass. It doesn't impact lure movement/sink rate as much as wire leader, and it's darn bite resistant. I've run into enough accidental bigger-fish strikes while bass fishing to convince me that I don't want to be without at least some bite protection.

I know people here building their own wooden lures put many, MANY hours into design, construction, tuning, painting etc.. But do you guys get a chance to actually get out on the water? I've seen tons of absolutely beautiful swimbaits with crazy cool action, extraordinary detail on paintjobs on everything people post pictures of. I know sometimes I've had lures that I thought looked great, and just don't catch fish. I also have a couple lures that look plain ugly, don't necessarily have the neatest movement through the water, but I have caught TONS of BIG fish on. Heck when it comes to catching fish this year, nothing has caught more fish or more big fish than 5'' watermelon colored senkos. In one week in canada, I had multiple 40+ fish days, I beat my personal best big pike 5 times, caught my first musky and proceeded to hook into 4 more on the trip.. and well over 3/4 of all the fish caught excluding lake trout in deep water were on wacky-rigged senkos. Heck 3 of the musky and 3 of the biggest pike on the trip were on senkos! I even did get one lake trout that was up shallow for some reason on one as well. It doesn't get much more basic than jigging a stick of soft plastic hooked through the middle. Now as I'm approaching the finish line for my first wooden lure, it got me thinking.. do the hours upon hours of making fancy lures pay off in catching fish? Frankly I don't care, because I've just had such a great time carving and sanding and painting and just working with my hands, it's very relaxing. But I wonder how much testing people do with their lure designs to see if they actually CATCH FISH!

I found devcon 2 ton in a store called "hardware hank". I don't know how national that is, but there's a number of them around Minneapolis where I live. I was also told by a co-worker that he saw devcon products in Ace Hardware.. you might be lucky and find devcon 2 ton if you have one of those nearby.

I decided to go ahead and give a shot at making my first lure be a through-wire swimbait. It seemed to be about the hardest thing that was reasonable to attempt, and would give me a good chance at failing. I wanted to actually learn something, and in something like this I'm betting I will learn the most from my failures. Finding out what doesn't work helps highlight what does! My woodworking tools were limited to a dremel, a leatherman, and a hand saw. I cut a block of basswood to my desired dimensions and cut out the cross section of what I wanted with hand tools (a hand saw and my leatherman). I then shaped the curves with my dremel and sandpaper. I cut the lure into 3 pieces, and drilled holes for through-wire construction and weighted the lure to be roughly neutrally buoyant (using some good ol' math calculations) They are now coated in a slightly thinned layer of devcon 2 epoxy. It's too late to do much more but the pieces will dry overnight. All I need to do now is paint, top coat, and epoxy in my through wire hardware. I'm hoping to paint before work, and do the rest in the evening. Painting should be quick, this lure isn't an exercise in learning to paint, but I'd prefer to have something presentable as a "finished product" to friends and family. Don't take any that as if I'm saying I feel confident in the lure. If the lure does anything other than explode in a shower of splinters when I first test it, I'll be surprised Maybe at the very least if it fails to be a successful swimbait, I can cheat and slap a lip on it to give it some action. I can always take it fishing in canada for pike, canadian pike would hit a beer can with hooks attached if you tried it.

Thanks guys you pretty much affirmed what I thought I understood about swimbaits @ vodkaman, I was particularly interested in smaller swimbaits specifically because as you mentioned, the big ones have the big S movement, the smaller ones seemed to have the more rapid wiggly movement. I want to experiment with fishing some more erratic swimbaits versus slow S moving swimbaits next time I hit up some Canada fishing.

Is basswood a strong enough wood to use just screw eyes for attaching hook anchors and line ties, or do you pretty much need through-wire construction?

I realize with wooden swimbaits, room for all the lure hardware is an important consideration. Does this make it more difficult to make smaller swimbaits, as opposed to the big'uns often used for musky/pike fishing? Does anyone have any smaller swimbaits?

I find hobbyists don't have just ONE hobby they are interested in, many of us branch out! My big hobby other than fishing is reptiles. I currently am raising and breeding two pairs of crested geckos, and I'm raising up a female coastal carpet python who will be up to size and need a boyfriend in a couple years. I also enjoy working in the kitchen. Most of my creative food-ing is put towards candy making. My favorites to work on are taffy, hard candies, and chocolate truffles. The easiest for me is caramels, and while I don't really do anything creative with caramels, they sure are just about some of the tastiest things I cook up. Oh and I dabble in about a dozen different instruments, though none well enough to perform and be paid for it. How about you guys?

I've never airbrushed in my life, but it seems to be a very useful, almost necessary technique for painting hard lures. Is there anywhere that gives a rundown on what airbrushes are, what equipment (necessary and optional) I'd want, how to use them etc?

Thanks again everybody for all the replies! Keep 'em coming if you have more to add, nothing is a better resource than a community like this! A couple of questions.. Does anyone know if fishing/outdoors stores carry precut lips for cranks? To anyone near minneapolis, do you know if Thorne Bros. carries lips? I know they carry supplies for making wire lures and fly tying but don't know what other lure making supplies they have. On devcon epoxy, and epoxy in general: what's the difference between all the different kinds of "epoxy" I see in hardware stores? I'm probably going to pick up the devcon 2 ton because that's what was recommended, but does anyone use another brand/type? On paint thinner: what's the difference between "paint thinner" and acetone? Is paint thinner primarily acetone? I've got a bottle of 100% acetone lying around so I'll probably raid that for thinning the epoxy. Brushing on first coat of thinned epoxy: what do you mix the acetone and epoxy in? I obviously want to do this in something other than a cut that I care about, so something throw-away might be nice, but I worry that plastic cups will be eaten away by the acetone. thanks again!!

I saw a tutorial earlier where the guy cut his lure in half, carved a route on both halves for the wire insert, and glued the halves together.. I'm not too fond of the idea of cutting a wood body completely in half and gluing it back together just to do a wire-through lure.. I assume there are alternative methods??

where in wal-mart did you find blocks of basswood?? I looked around this evening and didn't see wood of any sort. I checked the michael's next door, for a 4x3x10 block, they wanted $30! Little pricey, eh?

thank you so much guys!! One more quick question: What tools should I be picking up immediately for hand-carving?

I've decided to try my hand at making some of my own lures, partly because I just want to catch with with something I made myself, and partly because I just want to take up a new hobby. I've spent the past month or so digging up as many resources on lure making as I can. These forums are incredible, but all the information out there is a little overwhelming for someone with no experience with anything like this. I know that "lure making" is huge, with limitless possibilities, so I need to narrow down my approach to some specifics. I've decided to put my time towards wooden lures. My goal I'm setting for myself is to be able to make shallow lipped cranks, deep diving lipped cranks, and eventually slow sinking lipless jointed swimbaits. I'd like to learn to paint, and I figure I'll probably want to learn to airbrush since that seems to be very popular. My issue is that I just don't know how to go about making any of the above from start to finish. I've never done woodworking before, I don't quite understand how you're supposed to attach hooks and hardware, how you're supposed to weight lures with lead, and most of all I'm absolutely 100% out of my realm of understanding when I read up on how you guys paint lures. I know absolutely NOTHING about paint, and when people start throwing terms like MinWax and epoxy and enamel around, I really don't have a good grasp of what any of that means. If anyone can help me get started, just with some resources or some step-by-step hardbaint construction I can copy for a first attempt, I'd love it! Thanks!!