Anyone make thir own wood crankbaits?

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gmoney

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I've been looking into making some lures and was wondering if anyone on here makes their own?

Any tips or advice?
 
I have not, but I have been thinking about getting a decent cheap airbrush to start playing around. I see some neat reel paints and lure paints I would love to try, just for hobby though.
 
I've been looking into it as a hobby as well. I have the woodworking tools so just a small compressor and a cheap airbrush is all I should need. I looked at some Badger airbrushed today, $180 for a cheap dual action :shock: . That's not happening, looks like eBay it is!

Found this guys blog on the baits he makes and he has a bunch of how to videos. This guy does an amazing job!

https://solarfallbaits.blogspot.ca/
 
Jim said:
I have not, but I have been thinking about getting a decent cheap airbrush to start playing around. I see some neat reel paints and lure paints I would love to try, just for hobby though.



With all that spare time :roll:
 
gmoney said:
I've been looking into it as a hobby as well. I have the woodworking tools so just a small compressor and a cheap airbrush is all I should need. I looked at some Badger airbrushed today, $180 for a cheap dual action :shock: . That's not happening, looks like eBay it is!

Found this guys blog on the baits he makes and he has a bunch of how to videos. This guy does an amazing job!

https://solarfallbaits.blogspot.ca/


If you're looking for a cheap airbrush to just play around with and get used to painting i would recommend looking at Harbor Freight (harborfreight.com). I had an expensive airbrush that eventually broke so i bought one here and it does the job just fine at a fraction of the cost! I actually went all out and bought a lathe so i could do baits and rod grips if i wanted to start building rods but i never used it and it took up space so i sold it. Really you can go a long way with just a stationary belt sander and a dremel tool.
 
My BIL wanted to use up some of the many wine corks that he has...( Hee hee)...

He wanted some small, lightweight poppers made out of the corks.

I took a two inch long coarse threaded wall-board screw; cut off the Phillips head; chucked the new "tool" into my electric drill. I jammed the screw into a cork; then held the spinning cork up against my belt sander and ...Viola!... a shaped cork. By bending the drill-driver you can shape the cork ( or other soft wood, like cedar) into pretty much any tapered shape that you want.

He doesn't have a belt sander, so I suggested he simply glue some 60 grit sandpaper onto a flat board and just hold the spinning cork up against that. Slower, but should work well enough.

Run some wire through the cork, attach some hooks.... paint and there you go.

Of course, you could also start out with just a pine dowel (heavier) and work from there, too.
regards, Rich
 
I took some scrap would and cut out a couple of shad rap bodies on my scroll saw and went to work with the dremel and a bit of sandpaper. Here is the result:

8c4e003f.jpg


43e947d5.jpg


I ordered an airbrush off ebay and some lure parts from lurepartsonline.com, now I just have to play the waiting game for everything to get here and for a compressor to go on sale!
 
before you paint you might want to seal the wood and then run them in water (bathtub, pool, small pond, etc...) to see how they act. You might need to add weight in places to keep it balanced and it would suck to have to drill thru a nice new paint job!
 
Thanks for the tips guys.

I bought some epoxy sealer and I'm going to seal them up and test them out. I drilled the holes in the bottom to add a 1/8 oz. egg sinker so that the bait will sit right side up. If they suck, I'll just make more lol. I bought enough parts to make way more lures than I currently have.

@richg, What's a better shape to start out with?
 
re Shape....Oh, what you've done is excellent. It is simply more complicated than one that is symmetrical. I am impressed!

I just thought it would be easiest to make a simple pencil shape, tapered on each end for one's first attempt at shaping a lure. You are, obviously, a very good carver.

If I were going to do make a symmetrical body.....I'd use the
"put a headless wood-screw in your drill";
"chuck the pointy end of the screw into a piece of wood/cork/etc. " and
"spin the wood against a sanding drum/belt/board" process that I described in a message above.

Below is a quick example, using a wine bottle cork. I cranked it out in a few minutes after seeing this post.

12012-03-30%2B12.56.23.jpg


12012-03-30+12.55.50.jpg
 
Thanks rich!

I think the big help in carving is my knock off dremel came with a snake arm so that you have way more flexibility and you are basically holding a pen in your hand instead of the whole dremel. Makes it a lot easier to work with. I cut out the basic shape of both the side and top profiles that I had traced from the lure and then sanded the crap out of it with the dremel to get a more rounded shape and then switched to a palm sander to smooth everything out and then finished off with some hand sanding.

All my ordered stuff has been shipped out so it should be here in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully airbrushing isn't too hard. All the guys on youtube make it look easy, but they have probably been painting forever!
 
I'm certain that you will do a great job with the airbrush.

However, I'd guess the 50 or so older wooden lures that I have hanging on my lure collection were NOT painted with an airbrush. Shucks, way back when.... we used a plain old "camel's hair" brush for anything small.

I guess we killed all of the hairy camels because all I see now are synthetic brushes at the local stores. Ha Ha...

I am anxiously awaiting the next chapter in your story here. regards, Rich
 
A quick update on my lure making adventure:

I have made a couple more lure blanks so far. My latest one I'm working on is the Storm Kickin' Stick. It caught my eye at the store so I took a couple pictures and scaled the measurements to make a proportional lure blank. Here's what I ended up with:

stormkickinstick-1.jpg


918eaa4f-1.jpg


248d9ab2-1.jpg


It's a work in progress, it still needs some sanding and shaping.

I also started a blog to track my progress on lure making and to provide some tutorials so that people can also learn how to make some lure if they want. Follow along at https://geclures.blogspot.ca/
 
Great job. I love your choices for the shapes. Should be a scaled up killer when done.

Now, if I could just get the blades on my mini-bandsaw to stay on the tires...I could try one like that. Well done. Rich
 

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