Baitmaker

Thank you all for the interest and nice comments. There are few things I would rather do than build baits and fish. My main business and background is in portrait painting, but this is a nice change of pace from that. Catching fish on your own creations is a great feeling and I hope to inspire others to get into it. John

After trying several different clear coats out there, I would personally not use 5 or even 30 minute epoxy as a top coat. It doesn't hold up nearly as well as long set epoxy like Enviro Tex. And to my knowledge, there is no spray can clear coat that will hold up on baits. I've tried auto clear lacquer and several other types. Fast set epoxy yellows quite a bit over time, and will eventually let water in. The down side to using long set is that it takes many hours to dry, and will require turning the work to avoid runs and pools. If you do not have a drying wheel, you can get by with ultra thin coats and manually turning the work regularly for the first few hours. Adding some heat to the room will help speed up the process. It takes much longer, but the end result is a clear hard finish that will last a long time. It has to be an exact 50/50 ratio and mixed for several minutes or it won't dry rock hard. To help with runs, wait a half hour to 45 minutes after mixing before applying it.

Sorry for the photo album. I guess you get the idea.

Some more basement baits.

A couple attempts at a new through wire gold foiled musky bait in the works. For this one I carved and sanded gill plates out of epoxy putty that make for a nice 3-D effect especially when covered in foil. Working with this ultra thin leafing foil really tests the limits of my patience. Usually, the end result is pretty cool and worth the trouble, but I really hate this stuff.

I like to build baits in a series of 3 or more. Especially my prototype designs. Each one will have slight differences between them that allow for instant feedback during testing. For example, these 3 have the same side profile and identical weighting but are slightly different in thickness and head shape. The blue gill has more shoulders and a rounded head, while the tiger is a bit more flat sided with a narrow head. These changes will all effect how a lure performs and give me a better understanding of how to build baits with very specific actions. Whether it's a wide wobble, or a tight chatter, or an erratic seeking action etc. The next 3 may be different in weighting or line tie placement or whatever. There's an endless combination of things that go into it, and one of the reasons I enjoy it so much.

TY S. Sass. I mainly make them for my own personal collection, but have sold some in the past. And yes, it appears as though they set a smaller limit on new users at first. That makes total sense to keep riff raff or even bots from blowing it up with trash. My max total upload size is now a whopping 7.32MB

This site must have a limit of available bandwidth for new users. Which would be understandable. If that's not it then I give up.

New thread didn't work either.

Would like to post some more but it is saying this. " You can only upload a total of 0MB". I'm done trying to figure it out. Sorry

Thank you, and although I do build wire through baits, the ones pictured are made with eye screws. One reason for that is due to the rattle chamber limiting the room for the wire to pass through. They are made with a single bearing side to side rattle vs the head to tail rattle chamber in most baits. These are sealed, and have 3 coats of E-Tex epoxy, so the eye screws will never come lose. It appears as though the picture file size limit has been dropped from 200K (when I originally posted) to 30K. The only explanation is that I have nearly reached my upload limit. Will check back tomorrow and see if it's back to 200K. Reducing all these pictures is just a pain in the butt.

Thanks a lot for the info, but the first picture at the top of my post is well over 30 KB. Now it says my limit is 30 KB. I'm done messing with it for now. Unless there is a daily limit of how much you can upload than it's not making any sense. I have no problems uploading photos to another forum that I'm on.

All of my files are in the jpeg format. I'm not computer savvy enough to know how .03MB converts to KB or exactly how to go about making the file size small enough without reducing the photo size too much.

Thanks for the nice comments. Still having problems posting more pictures. Perhaps I've reached my daily or newbie bandwidth limit? It says max total size 0.03MB

Thank you, but I have opened my pictures in Paint and re sized them to over half their normal size and they are still too large. BUT- The pictures that I already uploaded were larger than that. Hmmm

Thank you. I'm having trouble adding pictures but will post more when I get it figured out. The file sizes are within the limits but it's telling me it's been exceeded.

Hello, My name is John, and I am a new member here. Making my own fishing lures has been a hobby and passion of mine for 8 or so years now. I began making my own casting and jigging spoons out of metal tubing and lead, and now make my own crankbaits out of wood. (Mainly cedar) Lately I've been building these square bill rattle cranks and mid diving walleye baits. Below are some samples of my work in metal and wood.