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Posts: 229
| What kind of wood is prefered for making lures? Does it make a difference wither its for a crank, glider, or jerk bait? What is easier or harder to work with? What has better advantages/ disadvantages in the water, painting, etc? I'm going over to my parents next week and will have access to my dad's workshop and would like to work on a new bait idea. Thanks.
Andy
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Posts: 2061
Location: Belgium | as far as I have any knowledge about the wood types you have available, here are some tips.
surface lures:
use light wood, not necessarily soft wood. Cedar, basswood and red cedar are all excelent choices. Even pine is quite good because the American pine wood doesn't expand when it gets submerged in water (european pine keeps expanding and the grain keeps showing, ruining the paintjob)
jerkbaits:
for diver style jerkbaits you can use both light and heavy wood (low and high density wood), depending on whether you want a floating diver or a slow rising diver without having to weight it. If you wish to add lead, go for the light wood. I use meranti and pine for divers that are supposed to be buoyant, beech wood for suspending divers.
for gliders, I mainly use beech wood because it is a high density wood type so you don't need to add a lot of lead to make it sink, unlike cedar wooden lures like HR's or lures like cob's gliders. These have a lot of lead in them and they are made from soft wood. Go for beech wood, oak, mahogany, ...
For an inbetween style of jerkbait (slider style) use medium density wood like the meranti or similar wood. You'll need to add some weight but ot nearly as much as you would for gliders.
crankbaits:
I make shallowrunning lures from either meranti or cedar or even abachi (wood type used for sauna's)
deep divers are made from the same type of wood but you'll need to weight them. Or use a large steel lip. I found that wood types with a high density do not have the same wobble (a less distinct) wobble as lures that are made from lighter wood types. Check out pine as well for crankbaits.
I make suspending lures from beech wood because it is near neutral buoyancy.
I hope this helps. If you have more specific questions, feel free to email me |
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Posts: 1335
Location: Chicago, Beverly | I've got lures made of Alder(jerk bait), Pine (various lures), Teak(crankbaits), and Balsa(rapalas). I've got a glider made some tropical wood,can't remember what it is right now...I just found it, the lure is called a hammer. It is made of cocobolo wood. Cocobolo according to the package for the lure "naturally sinks". |
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| I've been using Cherry and maple (hard to work with,but needs less lead)for gliders. Cedar (aromatic,clear, or red all work) for top water and cranks. Oak for jerk baits. Cedar is the easiest to work with in my opinion. If you want to get to be neutral bouyancy without lead,you can use Tungsten it also allows for more precise weighting as it is more dense than lead so you can use smaller sizes at the same weight. Have fun, building lures is addicting. I just started in Oct and can't stop!! |
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