Bait building, rattles and slot

Well, progress has been a bit slow but we should be able to start installing some lips ( bibs ) today.
These are some pics of the rattle chambers and slot.

I think for the most part everyone is finished with rattles and have put in the front and rear screw eyes. We leave the hook hangers out until after lip installation. The jigs we have were made for 14" baits, so the hole for hangers are not there for the smaller ones.

My 10" baits are .052 wire and the 14" perch baits I used .062. I am also adding a cut down worm tail to 2 of the perch baits using a plastic screw wall anchor. I will get some pics to show.
We are also going to try using Gorilla glue on the lips.  I did a test bait with some and it was impressive. With epoxy lip installs you can normally get the lip to crack loose by hand. On this, I had to put the lip in a vise and twist it from the tail of the bait to break it loose. This was in a 14" bait!
I haven't had time to play much with the aspen baits but I will get going on them again.
There are some added pics from the lip install. The Gorilla glue really seemed to hold well, and was a much cleaner install on the lips. Next they will get a bead of epoxy at the lip to wood area for extra strength. The jigs shown are a real help in aligning the lip, making it as true as we can get them.The hot dog boards are for holding the baits during different processes.
The worm tail attachment was relatively simple also. The rear hook hanger was held in, as to allow a barb to be placed in the worm tail . This was with the thought of keeping the hook secured to the tail and not flopping around. Maybe it will pay off for all those following nippers, that love to nip the tails off.  

( Keep it in the Water )

Update to Bait Build 2012

A Propionate Soak.

In my attempt to stay a little ahead on the build, I needed to get my pine batch into the propionate. Time just wasn't working with me. I decided to break up the 36 pine baits into three separate jars, 10", 8", and 6". This entailed arranging the baits in the jars so they were submerged and weighted to stay there. Then sealed the jars. When time permitted I would open the jars and let them breathe. There wasn't a lot of room at the tops and I thought it would help in maintaining negative pressure in the jar to let the air escape ( burping).

I do not have a formula for the mix, surprise. I use the mix ratio once at the beginning and change it for my needs, that's where a thick and thin jar comes in. This mix was closer to water than 2% milk, some where in between I guess? I was looking for a penetrating soak, trying to seal the bait's not just coat them. So as time permitted, 48 hours later?  I ran some temp screw eyes in and hung them up to dry. Once they dried out I did a quick dip in the same jars and let them dry. The next day I was able to sand them down.

As I was sanding, I realized that the consistency and feel of the propionate on these baits ( you can see the difference between raw wood sanding dust and propionate sanding dust ) was that of my baits from last year. Last years baits were soaked three times and coated three times? All tolled, about a day's work.

I am only looking to seal the pine wood bait's and think this worked well to do just that. I find no need to build a coating of propionate on the surface as we use a 2 part automotive primer for paint.
If you are using propionate, keep in mind the film thickness of a coating and what you are trying to accomplish.
A coating is better achieved with a little thicker mix, a soak a little thinner. I have not had a lot of success with the propionate as a clear top coat, nor have I put the time in to perfect it. There really isn't a wrong way of doing it. This just gave me the time to accomplish my task, with the same or better results.
Note. Unless you like watching the air bubbles, you do not have to use glass jars. Just make sure what ever you do use doesn't melt from the acetone?

( Keep it in the Water )
 

Musky Bait Build 2012

The Musky Bait build for this year has finally started.

It appears that we will be a man down, so Al has 80 some old baits and 20 new 10" to wrap up. We have been helping to get him caught up. Frank is in the 36 to 40 range. Tom is building 19 or 29 and I have 36 pine and trying about 30, 3/4"aspen on some drop belly, jerk, glider type baits. I haven't made any of these type before, just wanted to try a few. We will see how it works out?

We planed all of the wood down , just in case we need more baits to work with! Cut them to size, slotted the lip and copied our patterns the first day.
The blade we are using for the lip slot is a little light of an 1/8th inch, so after slotting we need to run a 1/8" drill bit thru the slot for the lips to fit. The bit follows the cut slot real well .  

The earlier preparation in lure type and lip patterns paid off at this point.
Second day in, was to locate and mark hook hanger locations, line tie and rattle chambers. Decide if you are using the eye location for rattles and or the body of the bait, along with how large to make the chamber?
Then we started drilling and cutting out the patterns, along with shaping the baits on the sander. Al still needs to shape his batch for this year.

There are a lot of mixed thoughts on rattles and a lot of good articles explaining the idea. All ideas are good , if it puts Muskies in the boat!
If you have one belief, then you are able to rationalize why the others aren't as good, you should keep an open mind . I prefer a little more of a deadened rattle verses a higher pitched one and will probably stick with one chamber in a bait.I have come to prefer the rattle in the body rather than the eye location, there is just more movement in the body area as the lure moves thru the water.

Frank and I will be using thru wire on the 10" baits, so they will need wire bent up. The rest will all be screw eyes. We will all be using 3D stick on eyes.

 I had a chance to start routing the edges on my stock pile, but need to get a 3/8" round over for the 3/4" baits. The 1/4" round over works fine on them, I just want to make the drop belly glider type a little  rounder.
I get a kick out of it at this point. The wood is taking shape and becoming a fishing lure.

We also started a propionate soak going on Al's baits from last year. We didn't want to end up trying to dip 200 baits when it came time to do this years.
You will see in the pictures we abandoned the glass jars for this. To many baits for jars. The pictures are from the second dip, we do try to cover the bucket to keep fumes down and ventilate as best as we can.
The first dip was a bit over an hour, the second a bit over a half hour. When they came out off the bucket on the second dip, they were dipped in a jar of a little thinner propionate , then hung to dry.
This is all pine wood with the exception of a small batch of aspen this year.

I did grab a 3/8" round over bit from the Depot, the 3/4" aspen are starting to look pretty cool!
Still have to sand them down and drill for screw eyes and rattles.

In case you haven't guessed by now, I don't always follow the rules? I also got a soak in on my pine baits.

Music provided by Justin Somerville.

 ( Keep it in the Water )