whittler

Wow Marty, you have indeed been busy. Hard to pick a favorite among that group.

Just fantastic Jon, beautiful work. This post should be a great inspiration to the new builders, your comments on line tie position are spot on.

Nice work Dave.

Thanks guys, appreciate it. Dave, your real close on how its done. Its painted black then the large mesh is sprayed white, then a coat of trans. blue, a second smaller mesh and a trans yellow until the light green appears, a smaller mesh and flo. green to highlight. The mesh is not used on top of each other but put on after the paint dries from the previous coat is heat set.

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Here are a few more PVC cranks. They are 2" long, shallow runners except for the last two minis which are thumbnail size.

Great work Jon, gotta love those flatsides.

Looking good there Jeff, are those done on your foam baits or are they wood?

WOW, just some great color patterns Mike.

Just some beautiful work there Mike, can't pick a favorite.

They look good to me crankster, but then any time flat cranks are mentioned you have my atention, nice work.

Jon, I like the tighter wiggle on most baits so my vote goes for the first video. As you are finding, even the slightest change can make some drastic changes in action but the fun in building, at least for me, comes from the experimentation.

Nice work there Mike, have not seen anyone pick up painting as fast as you have. It is not necessary to draw blood while painting however.

I lke the action of the original the best. A great looking bait by the way, should be a killer. Have a lot of testing to do myself next week, even with the ice. I'm lucky that I can use the high school swimming pool when class is not in session. Hard to beat gin clear water and known depths plus 72deg. while there is a foot of snow outside.

Nice looking bait there Ben. To follow up Marty's question what is the action like?

While there is some trial and error involved, if you will do some homework and study other sucessfull swimbaits it will save a lot of the error portion of your work. This is a personal opinion and I realize it is not shared by everyone on what a true swimbait is but if it requires a lip for action, to me, it is a large crankbait. To me a true swimbait has action without the aid of a lip. For example if you were to look at an MS Slammer, its called a swimbait, but if you were to look at a Mouldy's Hawg Wobbler it is refered to as a musky crank/topwater bait and they are nearly identical in design. The Mouldy has been around long before the swimbait thing was even known.

Some fantastic looking baits there Marty. Man you have been busy lately.

Marty if your just playing with foil now, can't wait till you start getting serious. Great baits.

Wood! You guys actually make baits out of that stuff? I apologize, just could not resist. I use quite a bit of basswood but have the advantage to be able to cut and cure my own so you can always get good quality. Use some balsa but most of my baits for the last couple years have been made from PVC.

Beautiful work Mike.

Man that is some nice paint there Mike. Especially like the Sexy shad and the Crappie patterns.

Like them all Marty, can't pick a favorite. Really looking forward to seeing your new cold water baits. Do these bore a hole in the ice and cut their own line path too?

Like that design, should work out very well. One of the big advantages of using Sintra/PVC is that you can change lips and hardware while testing without worry of the body absorbing water. Just a touch of super glue or hot glue will allow changing hardware with no problems.

Some of your best work Dave.

After looking those baits over carefully, don't see a thing in the bunch that won't catch bass, good stuff Marty.