A Couple Of Questions

[JBlaze]

 I am attempting to make my first suspending jerk bait, It is made of balsa wood and was made to the shape of a Smithwick Rogue and is slightly fatter and just a smidgen taller than a rogue. I have made crank baits with balsa and never had a problem with tow eyes or hook hangers pulling out but this bait is longer and skinnier.

 

    #1. My Question is,  Will it break and/or Does it need to be thru wired?

 

 I have followed all the posts relating to concrete sealers and am thinking about giving it a try for sealing and top coating from what I am seeing/reading, it seems that the AC1315 is the way to go. I have never saw Behr brand concrete sealer mentioned. It is available at our local Home Depot.

 

    #2. My question is,has anyone has ever given it a try and if so how did it work out?

 

Thanks, John

[RayburnGuy]

Let me try to answer your questions in a roundabout way. First of all if I wanted to build a suspending lure it would not be out of balsa. The first thing your going to have trouble with is installing enough ballast to make it suspend. The amount of ballast you'll have to have will require drilling out a lot of the wood and IMO you would have to reinforce the bait with either a wire through harness or some other form of reinforcement. It's going to be difficult to find a place for all the hardware in the bait as well. Is it impossible? Probably not, but there are a lot better choices of material to build a suspending bait out of. Again, that's just my opinion.

 

If this is your first try at a suspending lure I would say to try it out of Azek PVC. There are multiple reasons for this. First of all it is extremely difficult to build a lure that comes even close to a suspending bait. It's all about water temp and weight and it will take multiple tests to get it right. I mentioned before in a post that the difference between being a slow sinker and a slow riser on one of the baits I was building was so infinitely small that the sliver of lead I removed in the last test wouldn't register on my digital scale even when it was set to thousandths of an ounce. This is where the waterproof PVC comes in handy. You don't have to worry about repairing the seal coat every time you test it.

 

If you don't want to bother with the PVC there are a lot of wood species that are more suitable to a suspending lure. Just find one that is closer to the specific gravity of water than balsa. Not only will it require less ballast, which in turn leaves more room for hardware placement, it will also be much stronger than balsa. And by being stronger you won't have to worry about through wiring.

 

Not trying to rain on your parade. Just trying to save you a lot of grief.

 

good luck,

 

Ben

[benton B]

No need to thru wire the bait, just use twisted wire and it will hold just fine.   I've never had a wire pull out of my bang-o lure style baits.  

Good luck with the build.

[JBlaze]

Ben and BentonB, thanks for the replys.  

 

Ben, not really what I wanted to hear but I already suspected it would take a lot of ballast for the balsa, thanks for the benefit of your experience. Think I will go with the PVC trim board  for my attempt at suspending baits. I have 8 of the balsa woods cut out and one is already shaped, think I will make floaters out of these. Will let you know how the suspenders work out.

 

BentonB, I was kind of worried that the long skinny lure bait might break in the middle. I like you have never had one pull out of a crank bait. Thanks for the reassurance.

 

John

[Seeking 56]

What about hardwoods John?  Have you experimented with maple, birch or oak?

 

I'm partial to mahoganey but the others I named are very good for suspending baits.  I say this because I've used them.  You can use screw eyes and you would need little weight if any at all to balance the bait Factor the weight of the hooks as well.

 

My 2 cents.

 

s56

[mark poulson]

John,

I made a thin, long spybait out of PVC, and was worried about it's strength, especially because I add my 1/4" lead wire ballast by drilling holes up from the belly.

The bait was 1/2" thick, so there was only 1/8" of material on each side of my 1/4" ballast holes, which ran up about half way from the belly.

I used 7/8" .072 screw eyes for the line tie and rear hook hanger/prop shaft, and a Spro swivel for the belly hanger, and they held up fine.

Since wood has grain, if you orient the grain to run the length of the lure, it should be fine.  I find that wood has more strength than PVC in a bending application, and is more flexible, because of it's cellular grain structure.

I caught several stripers to 5lbs on that spybait, and it held fine, although the #8 trebles did bend out some.

Here's a picture:

 

http://www.tackleunderground.com/community/gallery/image/13886-20141217-070125-resized/

Edited March 11, 2015 by mark poulson

[RayburnGuy]

Hey John, just remember that there are several different grades, or densities, of balsa. The heavier grades are still lighter than anything else we use to build lures and I've read they work fine with line ties and hook hangers that are epoxied in place. I'm not so sure this is true of the lighter weight balsa. To get a certain grade of balsa it will have to be hand picked and will therefore cost you more. I've built baits out of the lightest weight balsa (usually used for building model airplanes) and these are holding up fine although they were either through wired or had a thin strip of basswood sandwiched between two outer pieces of balsa. The basswood core had the line ties and hook hangers anchored into it. For me the basswood core is much easier to do than building, and installing, a through wire. I don't feel I lose much more buoyancy than using dowel rods inserted into the bait to anchor the line ties and hook hangers. Again, this is just personal preference.

 

Good luck on your latest build.

 

Ben

[JBlaze]

What about hardwoods John?  Have you experimented with maple, birch or oak?

 

I'm partial to mahoganey but the others I named are very good for suspending baits.  I say this because I've used them.  You can use screw eyes and you would need little weight if any at all to balance the bait Factor the weight of the hooks as well.

 

My 2 cents.

 

s56

S56, I have never used hardwoods, probably because I never seem to have enough time for doing the things I want to do. Balsa is so easy to work with and fast to shape. PVC trimboard is almost as easy as the Balsa to work with.

I have used PVC Trimboard in the past to make cranks with good results and the convenience of not having to seal it each time you endeavor getting the ballast and balance right on a new lure is a major plus. In a few months, I will be retired and plan on trying different woods, Yellow Locust being one of them. It is so hard, that I have had sparks flying off the chain of my saw when cutting this wood. Thanks for the input.       John

[JBlaze]

Mark, I am thinking that the PVC Trimboard will be the way for me to go. I have some 3/4 inch and after slicing off the thin hard layer on the sides, it will leave me with a 1/2 inch thick board to work with. It is comforting to know that your bait held up to the 5lb stripers as they are a hard fighting fish. I will be looking for mostly smallmouth with these baits.

I suspect that it will not take a lot of ballast to get these lures to slow sink and I know that getting them to suspend will be a lot of trial and error. I used to wrap solder around the hook shanks of a crank bait to get it to suspend. Will let you know how they turn out.

John

 

John,

I made a thin, long spybait out of PVC, and was worried about it's strength, especially because I add my 1/4" lead wire ballast by drilling holes up from the belly.

The bait was 1/2" thick, so there was only 1/8" of material on each side of my 1/4" ballast holes, which ran up about half way from the belly.

I used 7/8" .072 screw eyes for the line tie and rear hook hanger/prop shaft, and a Spro swivel for the belly hanger, and they held up fine.

Since wood has grain, if you orient the grain to run the length of the lure, it should be fine.  I find that wood has more strength than PVC in a bending application, and is more flexible, because of it's cellular grain structure.

I caught several stripers to 5lbs on that spybait, and it held fine, although the #8 trebles did bend out some.

Here's a picture:

 

http://www.tackleunderground.com/community/gallery/image/13886-20141217-070125-resized/

[JBlaze]

Ben, I have always made do with what I could get at the local hobby store and have never had a problem with it except for one.  I had sawed it out with the direction of the grain running from belly to back instead of lengthwise. It self destructed rather quickly. Think I will go with the PVC as I believe the Balsa wood would get very weak with that many holes drilled in it for ballasting. Thanks for the good luck wishes.   John

Hey John, just remember that there are several different grades, or densities, of balsa. The heavier grades are still lighter than anything else we use to build lures and I've read they work fine with line ties and hook hangers that are epoxied in place. I'm not so sure this is true of the lighter weight balsa. To get a certain grade of balsa it will have to be hand picked and will therefore cost you more. I've built baits out of the lightest weight balsa (usually used for building model airplanes) and these are holding up fine although they were either through wired or had a thin strip of basswood sandwiched between two outer pieces of balsa. The basswood core had the line ties and hook hangers anchored into it. For me the basswood core is much easier to do than building, and installing, a through wire. I don't feel I lose much more buoyancy than using dowel rods inserted into the bait to anchor the line ties and hook hangers. Again, this is just personal preference.

 

Good luck on your latest build.

 

Ben

[benton B]

I only use the hard balsa for my baits, so I'm not sure if the really soft balsa would hold up.   Should have mentioned that in the first reply.   For my minnow style baits that float, I use 1/32 at the front hanger to get the nose of the bait down in the water just a little.  

[saltshaker]

Even tho I know nothing about "building" a lure from scratch...I sure enjoy reading about it.

 

Carry on.

 

[BobP]

The first order of balsa I made as a neophyte builder was super light competition balsa (6-8 lb sq ft).  I made baits from that batch for years and never had one destroyed by a bass or a medium sized pike.  I don't think there are any rules about making crankbaits - just do whatever necessary to get a bait that is as durable as you want it to be - whatever that means.  Personally, I've given up thru-wiring balsa baits.  Instead, I split a soft balsa bait in half and lay in hand-wound soft stainless wire hardware, then use epoxy to join the halves, undercoat and topcoat the bait.  On fat bodied soft balsa baits, I've sometimes just drilled longer holes and epoxied in the wire hangers/line ties without problems.

 

I wouldn't use concrete sealer to both prime and topcoat a balsa bait but would try it as a topcoat on a bait that had an epoxy undercoating.  As far as Behr goes, you need to do a little research to see if it contains enough solids in comparison to the AC1315 or other concrete sealers, to be a good topcoat product.  I got some AC1315, which contains 30% solids, and so far it seems promising as a topcoat for hard plastic lures, but for balsa I'm less convinced  - it's early days yet.  Use a solvent based concrete sealer, not water-based.

[JBlaze]

Thanks Bob, I don't build a lot of baits and am still learning. Hope I always will.

  I am sure, that the balsa I get at the Hobby Lobby is the light stuff and I have never had a hanger, bib or tow eye come out with a fish on or from getting hung-up and I have only used had twisted stainless wire too and only used the thin super glue to install them in a drilled out hole I have found that the thin glue will follow the twisted wire all the way to its end and makes a really strong bond between the wood and wire. I have always sealed these baits with thinned epoxy or thin super glue which really soaks into the bait and more than a few times has soaked all the way through the bait and glued my fingers to the opposite side. I have found that it really increases the strength of the balsa and doesn't seem to make it any heavier however, it does make it rather difficult to sand after using.

 Also Bob,  thanks for responding to the question about concrete sealers. I am really getting interested in this stuff. Yesterday, I tried researching the Behr Brand and could not find anything which gave me an answer as to the amount/percent of solids in it. Also if memory serves me correctly, I think it is water based. Will double check on that.

John