Nuts and Bolts,condensed version.

I am just going to do a run thru and go from there.
First comes the obvious, the type of lure. For those of you who still have a memory lasting longer than five minutes,skip this. For the rest of us, start a Bible ( notebook ) and wright everything down, you will thank yourself later. Make a drawing for a pattern if it's something knew, or a pattern from a lure you want to copy.
If it is new, determine the thickness, if it's a copy just measure it.Now some wood. Rule # 1. if it feels heavy it is heavy, it will not change.We have done oak, cherry, teak, wocaboca, maple, mahogany, Trex decking, Aztek plastic trim , balsa, basswood and the one that will work for just about anything #1 pine select. Home Depot or such is the supplier.
We normally get 1"x3" and plane it down to the desired thickness on a planner. Then cut to the length you need, we will normally go a 1/2" longer than needed in our lengths. Keep in mind we usually make 80 to 100 baits at a time. The idea is still the same. Then trace the pattern to the blanks, we hold our patterns to the nose of the bait because we use a radial arm saw to cut the lip slot, which is the next step. If you are making multiple baits of the same, install a stop block on the saw table, adjust the depth and angle, do a test piece and keep going.
Now you need to know if there will be drilled out glass eyes, as we use, stick on , or painted. Most lures need some kind of weight, now is a good time to know what you are going to do. While the lure is still a square block, you need to determine the balance point of a finished lure hooks and all, then drill the hole for lead or similar material and the eye location if you are going to use glass eyes. A drill press is best for this. You can determine hole size and depth for weight in a bait by taking some scrap wood, weigh it, drill it, add lead and weigh it again, grams are better than ounces, do this with different size bits and depths once and all you have to do is refer back to the bible in the future. Glass eyes are cool and we use the holes here to add rattles. Now you can cut out your pattern, a scroll saw or band saw work well. Depending on your skill level, staying away from the traced line is better and use a stationary belt sander or disc sander to bring it within tolerance, keeping all edges as square as possible.
I can not explain why,  but up until a couple of years age we never had jigs to help with these operations. Take the time to make some , they really do simplify some of the operations.
OK , all drilled out and moving on to rounding the edges. We have a couple of routers in tables set up to round the edges and cut the belly slot for wire.The edge can be what ever you choose depending on the thickness of your bait and what you are trying to achieve. The wire slot is cut with a kerf blade on the router. We are setup for .052 wire. Except for this years batch of baits, we were using thru wire construction.
Now it is time for some kind of wood sealer.This can be thinned out primer, sanding sealer,thinned out epoxy
thinned out envirotex or propionate which we started using a year or so ago.The jest here is to have some thing penetrate the wood filling the open cells and sealing it.
Then it is on to bending and installing wires. We have tried to bend our wires up prior to making the baits along with cutting the lips so everything is ready for building. We have jigs made to bend our wire so there is some kind of consistency in the 14" & yes the 18". Lips are cut on a jig with a die grinder that Frank had made up back in the early days. Once wires are in ,the slot is filled with epoxy of your choice, we use the West System because it flows well and penetrates into the wood. Now sand the bait for paint. If you are looking for a flawless finish, it starts here.Anything and every thing will show at paint.Primer is a adhesion promoter not a filler. Rough sanding shaping is at about a 150 grit, finish sanding a 220 grit. Prime and sand in the 400 grit range.
This is where the real Fun starts, Paint. Subject of it's own.

(keep it in the water)