swimbait , very first attempt

[scottishghillie]

Has happened to me in my limited time of lure building. Kind of worked it out that if I'm using the flourencent colours over epoxy or any other clear top coat I'll get the crackle effect. Now I know about it, I might use it to good effect. But bummer for you Diemai as I know you have put a lot of time and effort in to this particular lure.

[diemai]

Thanks for your concerns , guys , this failure really bothers me !

It would not have been as bad , if I hadn't put it out here on TU !

Not that I am somehow ashame about that failure(We all know Murphy , I guess ?) , but its just disturbing me !

As I got back from work , I went straight to my basement to check , and it seems , that the crackles have enlarged a bit !

So I almost made up my mind by now about the radical "Dremel" operation and have the lure bare of paint , dead !

After I'd prime again and brush paint as good as I can .

As rofish said , the fish won't bother !

I have already considered about brushing exclusively before , at least it would only cost a fraction of those rattle cans !

@ rofish

Here is the picture , that I refered to in my post , where the link didn't work .

It is really a bit unusual , but yet somehow ingenious .

But I guess , that the functionality stands and falls with the rigidity of the wire used .

The lure is stated to be 14,5 cm long .

Greetz , Dieter

Edited July 11, 2008 by diemai
adding text

[.dsaavedra.]

wow that hinge does not look easy to make!

sorry to hear about your lure though!

there is nothing wrong with brushing on paint! its all i do (i either brush or photofinish) and i can get pretty detailed with a paintbrush, something i couldnt do with rattle cans.

just wondering, is there any specific species of fish you are trying to imitate with your lure?

the shape of the body and fins really screams "carp" but your paintjob looks nothing like a carp.

will be interesting to see what your new paintjob turns out like

[diemai]

@ DSV

Don't know , how this hinge was exactly fixed into the lure , there were no instructions with it:huh: .

The wire coil one can simply wrap around a nail , fixed horizontally in a vise , done that before for spacer coils and coil spring locks .

I suppose , that the tag ends of the two hinge parts are either epoxied into bores of sufficient size or set in a two-halves lure , maybe secured with crosswise pins ?

In both cases the tag ends must be bent backward(towards joint) somehow to let epoxy grip better or give pins the opportunity to lock the parts against slide-out !

Or they are anchored similar to your "T"-shaped hookhangers ?

Indeed I wanted to resemble a small carp with my paint pattern , but the hatchery type with only few scales around the lateral line and the roots of the fins , these ones I have planned to brush on .

I think , I'd still stick to my plans , in fact I was almost about to start with brushing , now I regret not to have done it , would have saved a lot of difficulties:( !

Greetz , Dieter

[.dsaavedra.]

oh, duh!

i never thought of wrapping the wire around a nail to get the coil.

well now that doesnt seem hard at all....maybe i'll try that on my next bait.

cant wait to see when your paintjob is done....i just cant seem to see how that resembles a carp. maybe i dont know the species you are trying to imitate.

[rofish]

Diemai,

Thanks for the picture. When I saw it, I knew how I would make such a joint, because like you, I also wrapped wire around a sewing needle before. But for such a small diameter, you cannot use strong wire, you have to use soft wire like brass or copper. Harder wire might also work.

I know how I would make such a joint. First, I would wrap brass wire around a sewing needle to the desired length, and I will make 2 of them, with the same length. Then I would wrap them together with thin copper wire, then I would soldier everything. Now I would have 2 small metal tubes welded together, and I would pass a wire through each tube, bend them and then the wires go into the body, one to each segment you want to joint.

[diemai]

@ DSV

Here are some pics of different kind of carp , that we have over here . The most common ones in fishing waters are the ones with fully scaled body and the ones with partly scaled body(this is what I planned to resemble) . The one with almost no scales is rather more seldom .

All of these were breeded out of the wild carp , that looks almost alike to the scaled one , but has less body height , rather more spindle-shaped body .

You hardly see the fully scaled type in hatcheries , since the less scaled versions are easier to handle in the kitchen , but generally all are thesame kind of fish .

Hope , none of you guys would now smash your screen in anger , since by the thread by Spike-A-Pike I can now imagine , how much you dislike these fish:angry: !

Greetz , Dieter

[diemai]

Sorry , forgot attachements:huh: !

[diemai]

@ rofish

I would use 1mm dia. SST welding wire for the coil .

The trick is to first fix the nail with its head portion sideward horizontally into a vise(the head squeezes flat) .

The wire piece should be about 20" or more in length , bend one end in a way , that it would somehow bind between the two clambs of the vise , so the wire won't start to turn , as you are wrapping the other end tightly around the nail , coil against coil .

The SST wire has to be as long at the wrapping end , since it is quite rigid , so it wraps easier by hand , as that end gets shorter , one need to employ pliers to grab it .

Due to always needing to change grip of pliers , this operation won't work as easy as hand-wrapping and might lead to not accurate coiling .

After the coil is finished , one has to bend the two tag ends straight and 90

[mark poulson]

Out here in SoCal, we have big carp, including goldfish that people have released into our lakes, and which have grown and reproduced, so we have some really colorful carp.

But the majority of them are greyish brown, with orange fins, tails, and bellies. I think their colors may become more vivid when the spawn, which is when we see them in huge schools in the shallows.

They actually jump out of the water during the spawn, which can be pretty exciting when it happens near the boat. They don't rain from the sky like those silver carp in the Mississippi, though. Just the occasional boiler, slapping the water and making me think a giant bass is feeding until I actually see one in mid air.

[Perch]

.

They actually jump out of the water during the spawn...

The european carp do this through the entire warm season (starts in June here and lasts through September). It is the most serious opponent among "peaceful' fishes you can meet in Russia. They get as big as twenty-something kilogramms and their pulls and runs are ferocious and unpredictable. The biggest carp I had caught (before I fully switched to persuing predators) was 5 kilos and it took me quarter of an hour from hook set to land it. I have two friends who lost their rods to carps. And I do not mean that the rods got broken (these are accounted for by hundreds, I guess) but I mean the rods jet-started from the supports, went into the river and were gone forever before those fellas could stand up from their chairs.

Once a carp is more than a foot long it can relax, for there is nothing in the river that could harm it (except for catfish, but these would rather pick on easier prey). The small carp, however, is the meal of choice for pike. So I understand quite well Diemai's choice of pattern. I am looking forward to see one day the trophy he lands with this lure

[.dsaavedra.]

diemai,

your bait looks most like the third picture, the carp with almost no scales.

anyway, i hope nothing else goes wrong from here on out so you can hurry up and fish this bait and land some big fish! what kind of fish are you targeting with it?

[rofish]

Diemai,

I also make inline spinners. One type of body I make, is wrapped wire around cylindrical lead, with one end in which the diameter goes smaller and smaller. I made hundreds of them, if not more than a thousand. Although it is soft wire I use, I have a little experience with such things. I also had to bend wire around needles sometimes.

Here is the way I did the joint I was talking about. I used brass wire, which I wrapped around a sewing needle with the diameter of 1.2 mm (0.047")

I made 2 of them, equal length, and sanded the ends:

Then wrapped thin copper wire around them. I put a needle in each of them, to see if they are parallel. They were:

Then I soldiered them. I had to use a drill bit to make the holes again, Since I did not have a 1.2 mm drill bit, I used a 1.5 mm, so I enlarged the holes:

Then I made another joint, but this time, instead of brass wire, I used steel wire, 0.5 mm (0.020"). In case brass is not strong enough for the wear of the joint, one could use tempered steel wire:

But I also had another idea. I bought some small cloths pins, and used the spring to make the joint:

Both types of joints work very well, and I can see no reason why they could not be a perfect choice for a swimbait. It seems that you would need to make it from halves, but it is not so. You can leave longer pieces of wire, twist them, just the way you would make a twisted wire, and then cut off the ends (including the eylet at both ends of the wire).

[diemai]

@ rofish

Thanks a lot for the input and your pictures ! This is great:yes: !

Very clever idea about an even two way hinge:yay: !

If made accurate , it should provide the most "easy going" of a hinge , I suppose , though the single sections can't be as close together as with other designs .

I even think , that you won't even have to wrap extra wire around the two coils , when soldered properly , they'd be rigid enough .

But the problem would be to solder them perfectly aligned this way , I would try making a jig consisting of two of those needles , fixed rigid and paralell , also equipped with a sort of spacer , so that the two coils would sit right next to each other , perfectly paralell and level in their lengths for soldering .

If it should work out this way , one probably might even take brass tubing instead of wire coils .

But neverthelees , it is just a very clever idea , rofish !

@ mark poulson , perch , DSV

Thanks a lot for your comments , guys:worship: !

My wife took me shopping the whole day to Hamburg today , so I took a chance on a visit at a model shop and invested in a couple of model making paints(can't get them in my hometown) , by now I must have about 2 1/2 dozens of these small cans , so with some patience and a good hand on it I should get something going on that lure , though it would take a lot longer than spraying .

But now , after this bad failure , my ambition is on alert , but at first I'd have to remove all paint !

@ perch

Almost lost a rod as well to a carp in spring 2006 !

We were already packing up to leave and therefore didn't attend the last rod remaining on the rod rests only to see it suddenly getting pulled towards the water(happened in that pond shown in my avatar !) .

Before I could reach it , it was already swimming away on that pond , only to slowly submerge like a submarine on the dive !

We saw it coming up again on the other bank , got stuck in a bush , so my wife(it was her rod) could recover it after a 1/4 mile walk , the carp had already snapped the leader .

It remained afloat all the time , since it was a telescopic rod with obviously quality fittings , so no water entered to sink it , it could even carry the weight of the reel !

After some cleaning up of rod and reel , we caught fish with it

again the next weekend:yes: !

Around 10 years ago , I had another rod gone like this , but that one must be still there:( !

I guess , this most likely happens , when using a special type of hook with an inward curved point(yet not as pronounced as a circle hook) , these find grip immediately , even without a hookset !

So , if rods are unattended and bail closed(or "freespool" off) , they might be gone pretty fast:yes: !

Greetz , Dieter

[diemai]

Hi , folks

Meantime I have removed all that crackled paint from my swimbait with my "Dremel" and small rotary metal bristle brushes .

These brushes have very fine bristles , I have found , that the steel ones still work a bit better than the ones of brass .

But still the proccess takes quite a while , but works well , the hardwood remains untouched , only the weightholes , closed with two-component glue , grew small indentions , since the glue is obviously softer as the wood .

Had to do the same with one of my teakwood "Banana" lures , also used this rubbish yellow paint on it .

The teakwood was a little affected by the brushing , small woodgrains were torn away , but the general outer shape remained preserved .

By now I have already applied first new primer,-and paintcoats onto these lures , but it would still take quite a while , until completed !

Greetz , Dieter

[mark poulson]

Rofish,

You are a very inventive person.

Aside from doing a nice job wrapping the wire, your idea to use clothes pins is brilliant!

Diemai,

The carp we have out here in SoCal look like the middle picture, but with different colorings.

My hat's off to you. You are a man of infinite patience. I would have ruined the lure by now, trying to get the paint off more quickly.

I hope you can proceed without problems from here.

Perch,

I've hooked carp by accident twice, when they slapped at a crank bait and got snagged. Each time, it was five seconds of white knuckle excitement, where they just turned and ran as though my line wasn't even attached to them. I couldn't turn them, even with my thumb down as hard as I could jam it on the spool. And then they pulled off, leaving me, each time, with a huge scale impaled on my hook.

In a club tourament this past weekend, one of our club members caught a carp, estimated 10 lbs, on 6 lb. test line, on a plastic worm. He said it took him 20 minutes to get it to the net.

Another guy caught a 12lb catfish.

All great fish, but this was a bass tournament, so the other fish didn't count, and just ate up their fishing time. But they both said it was fun.

At times during the year, stripers are commonly caught alongside the largemouth bass, which are the only fish that qualify for the tournaments. Stipers grow very big, 30+lbs, and even the small ones fight very hard. They are a pelagic fish, swimming all the time, so they are very strong and fight like salt water fish.

For some reason, one of our lakes, Cachuma, has a lot more carp than the others, but they are in all our lakes. And in the City lakes in Los Angeles, people release pet gold fish, which grow enormous, and make those lakes very colorful in the spring.

[diemai]

@ mark poulson

In fact I am not the most patient kinda guy , but when I want something done well , there is no way going without:lol: !

@ Perch

Caught this one last summer in a small , but deep pond , an old clay pit , I suppose .

I accidendally hooked it on the belly with a medium sized "Turbo"-spoon(check gallery for "array of spoons")on lighter tackle .

It went like a steam engine , there was absolutely nothing , that I could do , but tighten the drag as much as possible with my thin braid .

It got hooked on the other bank at the backround of picture , since I didn't know that water too much , I have at first thought(and hoped) , that I had hooked a silure:wink: .

The fish got stuck into the reed , and I had already stripped my pants down to have a swim , when it moved again into open water , so my wife could finally net it after about 10 minutes fight .

It was 31" and 18.5 lbs , my biggest carp so far , but as said before , accidentally and badly hooked .

Such a fish won't usually go on your bait that easily !

BTW : tomorrow morning I am going to procced with my bait again , these model making enamels sometimes take long to dry for painting over .

Greetz , Dieter

[mark poulson]

Wow! That's a fish!

[diemai]

Thanks , Mark:) !

Here is a pic of a section of my swimbait in(second:huh:)painting process .

I am now using model making enamels , which takes a lot longer than spraying .

To get a nice effect of blending the tones , I wipe off most off the paint from the brush and shortly press the almost dry brush onto the surface rather than making the usual strokes .

I start out with the lighter colors and after go to the darker ones bit by bit , tone for tone:wink: !

The advantage is , if one section or one side of the blank should turn out uneven to the others , one can paint over with the lighter tones again .

A very time consuming method , but I am in good hope , to achieve quite a realistic look , though not as lifelike , as it would be possible by airbrush .

For the final paint touch-up and detail painting I consider to connect the sections for an even look .

Greetz , Dieter

[rofish]

Diemai,

I would surely like to buy (and use) some of your patience. How much would you charge me for?

[diemai]

@ rofish

Hahaha , I guess , that it is priceless:lol: !

But apparantly I am not a patient kinda guy at all(f.e. when looking for a place to park in Hamburg on a Saturday morning !) , but when it comes to sit in my workshop , all my worries and concerns about anything are miles away(just as when standing at the waters edge with the rod in my hand) , so I don't need to rush , as with so many other things nowadays:yes: !

Greetz , Dieter

[mark poulson]

Interesting how you paint. Makes sense about blending the colors.

That method of painting is used here in Los Angeles by faux artists, who make custom wall and cabinet/furniture finishes. They charge a fortune for it, because, aside from being beautiful, it is very time consuming.

I agree with you about having a different mind set when you're making lures. I, too, get consumed and lose track of time when I'm making a lure. My youngest daughter actually thanked me yesterday for my "genes" that she says I passed on to her. She is an artist, and says my genes give her tremendous patience in doing a task. I'll happily take credit. I get enough blame for everything else!

I told her that when I'm doing something I want to do, and I know it's going to take time, I don't get impatient, because I understand that it will be slow, and accept that. And I try and do my lure stuff after work, so I don't have the same time pressures.

I brush on some details from time to time, but I enjoy airbrushing, and achieving my paint schemes that way.

I generally make lures in batches, because it takes almost as long to make one as four or five, given the operations. I figure each four piece jointed swimbait has about three hours in it, start to finish. I could speed the process if I shaped them with a router, but I kind of enjoy using an oscillating sander to shape them. If I were going to do production runs, I'd rig up jigs for all the operations, and get it down to 1 1/2 hours each, but I make the lures for myself and my friends, and enjoy the process almost as much as catching fish with them. Almost.

[.dsaavedra.]

the paint looks great! looks more like a carp than your spray job!

[diemai]

@ mark poulson

A real great compliment to a father , indeed:yes: !

I have learned this paint style during my childhood making all kinds of models , either plastic kits or also my own designs , I was ever into building things .

But I am not too good in it , I have a luremaking book of Swedish origin(German edition) , the author realy takes it to the top there , if I was half as good as him , I'd be satisfied !

But I guess , that it would even still take more time:huh: !

I am like you , if I know in advance , that something would take long , I am OK with it , no problem . But if any unexpected delay should come up , no matter what , I could get quite mad about that .

I guess , I grew this attitude since I am forced to work in a shift system since 1992 , my days are always torn apart and I got to dislike my job nowadays , since the pressure on us increases frequently , so I consider my leisure time to be too precious for any kind of hold-ups:yes: .

It got to a real "spleen" , I guess , when I was younger , I took things much more cool .

But as said before , I don't mind working over a lure for a longer period of time , it is important to me , to have a senseful leisuretime occupation at all and not just waiting to go to work .

@ DSV

Thanks , but it is never finished like this , I will still apply more colors and also paint on some details:yes: !

Greetz , Dieter

[mark poulson]

Yeah, it really got to me. Just when you think they're getting too old to be your little girl any more, they open their mouths and out come these little pearls.

I'm sure it's programed into their female subconscious, so they don't get thrown out of the house too soon.

Too bad that doesn't hold for boys, or I'd have been able to stay in my father's house a little longer.