Twist Or Not To Twist

[bbf]

When building cranks that use thru wire do yall twist your wire(to form the loop)? Or do yall loop it around and try and get the tag end as close to the main wire as possible? Do any of you guys have a preferrance/ like one method over the other? I generally twist mine.

[RayburnGuy]

I've cut into several old Rapala's to take a look at their through wire construction and they didn't use any twisted loops at all. They simply made their bends in the appropriate places and then ran the excess back into the body of the bait running the wire parallel to itself. I'm currently trying a variation of this process. I form the loops by bending them around finish nails located where I want the line tie and hook eyes to be. When forming the loops I bend the wire tightly around the finish nails with a pair of needle nose pliers so that the wire touches itself and is running parallel. I'm then wrapping this joint with thread and applying super glue to the finished wrap. I'm still a novice at through wiring baits and haven't tried this process in actual fishing conditions, but I can't see why it wouldn't be at least as strong as what Rapala does. The pics below show a harness similar to the open form that Rapala uses and my version of it. I've tried a couple of the twisted wire harnesses and they were harder for me to make and took more time to complete. Rapala has been in business for many, many years and is considered one of the top tackle builders in the fishing industry and if the open wire form they use for their baits holds up then I can't see a problem with it. But that's just my two cents.

[BobP]

I glue the bait back together with 5 minute epoxy and don't feel any need to twist the wires. They are never coming out of there unless the bait breaks in half, in which case twisted/untwisted is the least of your problems (it ain't gonna happen anyway on bass baits). Running them parallel lets me use a small nail set to "draw" the little troughs in the wood needed to seat the wires so the bait halves go back together neatly.

Hand building baits is a balance between doing what is possible to increase durability versus what you think is really needed to produce a bait you're proud of and which catches fish. If you use every possible durability technique, it will cost you something in bait performance. There's no wrong answer but there's also no free lunch.

[woodieb8]

bob p is correct. our process is both. bent wire and the twist on the tail section. we wire thru but drill our smaller lures. musky guys prefer it this way. 0.62 wire can be hard on the hands.

[bbf]

Thanks guys for your feed back and comments.

[Matt Moreau]

I put a few twists on mine just because I can. It gives me a bit of confidence that nothing can happen but like Bob mentioned I think its not needed/overkill. Once the 5 min epoxy sets that bait is not budging twisted or not(for a bass bait atleast).