Niche Gill Carving

[RiverSmallieGuy]

I, like most of you guys, can appreciate the artistic touch that carved gills give a lure. Most of us have our own techniques for carving, though. I decided to post a topic asking everybody on here what gill carving tips that they have for those of us who are looking for a new technique to up our game. I have a few myself, though, which are these: 1. When you are carving very complicated gills, you should carve on little piece of it at a time on one side, then do that same part on the other side so that you don't forget what you did, especially if it looks good. Another one is simply take your time while scoring your lines. One final tip that I have is that if you want a lot of gill protrusion, sketch out your gill outline and drill your eye socket before you carve the chamfers and leave all of the material there on the gills to work with.

[Norwegian]

If you don't use stencils it might be useful filing down something like an old wire cutter so that the edge only meet at one point. Then by gripping the lure and make a small mark it's pretty easy to get them placed on the same spot on both sides. Sorry about the clumsy explanation but the picture might help

[RiverSmallieGuy]

23 hours ago, Norwegian said:

If you don't use stencils it might be useful filing down something like an old wire cutter so that the edge only meet at one point. Then by gripping the lure and make a small mark it's pretty easy to get them placed on the same spot on both sides. Sorry about the clumsy explanation but the picture might help

Is that a modified tool that you use for marking out the eye sockets?

[Norwegian]

Yes, eye sockets or fins or whatever I want to be at the same place on both sides. 

[RiverSmallieGuy]

That's actually a very good idea, I tend to just eyeball it real good and then just scale all of the details to where it is on the other side. I try to make it look as symmetrical as possible, with my eyeballs, of course haha.