bulletoothulk Posted July 23, 2016 Report Share Posted July 23, 2016 Carved my first swimbait and screwed up the scales pretty good , any one have any good tips ? Thanks in advance Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Travis Posted July 23, 2016 Report Share Posted July 23, 2016 If you are really wanting to "carve" them then lay out a diamond grid on your bait. Use a flexible straight edge (heavy paper, cereal box strip, etc..) use a pencil to draw your lines. Take a dremel and appropriate bits. A diamond V wheel or something similar in ceramcut and trace your lines to cut a diamond grid. Then go back with a round ceramacut, ruby round, etc.. and ease the back point on each diamond, rounding it slighting to give a scale like pattern. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonister Posted July 23, 2016 Report Share Posted July 23, 2016 This presents a very good topic. I too have the same scale issues. What about hand tools? Like maybe carving knives? I'm very interested! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Travis Posted July 23, 2016 Report Share Posted July 23, 2016 You can take the same approach with carving knifes. Just lay out your pattern with very light cuts and get a tight crisp v cut. Then edge the tips and some sanding with a fine grit paper. The issue is the time it takes. Depending on the paint scheme you can also just draw scales on with a pencil. James Fliger demonstrates how he does this in his book Carving Freshwater Fish. Bob Berry's books and Ed Walicki are also very common more popular books that show scale methods but will need to modify to fit what you want to do. Burning in scales usually the way to go if really wanting to get into doing scale work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hughesy Posted July 23, 2016 Report Share Posted July 23, 2016 (edited) You can get great tips for burning in scales here. http://www.mckenziesp.com/Fish-Scale-Tips-C5056.aspx Edited July 23, 2016 by Hughesy 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
