Stringjam

They look super! Nice job on the craw!

I've never switched to a lure with rattles and had it outfish a lure without. I'd rather a lure come without them if I had a preference. A crankbait is noisy enough without them. If you ever get bored, stick your head underwater and pull a crankbait by and you'll hear what I mean. One thing to keep in mind though - rattles effect the action on many lures, which is something I'm more concerned with than sound. I have a series of lipless crank with 3 different rattle levels. One is loud with a bunch of different BB's, the next level has much fewer rattles, and the third has none at all. You can see a noticeable difference in the liveliness of the cranks as you get progressively lighter.

Bob is right about the Sintra - I've also heard you can get free scraps at the sign shops. I ordered mine from www.foamboardsource.com. You're probably one of the few people that have tried out the P-20, Bob....I think the design is unique, but it just doesn't cast worth a darn. ;D My bait, of course, is much smaller and not intended for that much depth. I'm hoping it will be a solid mid-teens performer. I mounted the rear hook hanger, hook, and experimented with ballast tonight (I'm supposed to be assembling wedding invitations and other assorted things at this point, so I have to be stealthy in my crank testing/building endeavor... ). First of all - I was in shock that the thing actually worked when I pulled it through the tub, but I was even more pleasantly surprised that it was pretty much nailing the action I had in mind to achieve. Tight, snappy, with a very lively tail movement. Mostly wiggle with very little roll. I'm still accounting for clearcoat and the front hook weight, but otherwise still very buoyant with a 1/4 oz. weight. More buoyant than a DT-16. I think with the final hardware added it will be right where I want it. I tried adding some additional weight farther noseward to increase the nose-down angle, but found it to have a slight deadening effect on the action, without increasing the attitude noticeably. I think I'm going to have to decrease the main ballast weight if I actually plan on putting a secondary ballast up front. More experimentation to do here. I'm going to get the lure into "final mockup" mode with fully mounted hardware and ballasts and hopefully get it into some lake water soon......the bathtub is only so useful for deep crank evaluation. ;D I'm completely stoked at this point!

Great stuff......I really like that shad pattern!

Very nice, Cliff! I know that's the first time I've seen "Mad Cow" on a Poe's!

Thanks, Marty. The line-tie was a big question for me.....I've had my caliper out all week measuring the distance ratio on all my favorite deep divers trying to find a common thread. This bait is kind of a mix between the 70's version Bagley DB3, Rapala DT-16, and Imakatsu IK divers. ;D The lip spec was closest to the DT-16 so I used that ratio to start with. I'll try moving it forward it that doesn't quite cut it. I picked up some XPS finesse weights yesterday so hopefully I'll get this thing in some water tonight.

Yes, it's Lexan. The line tie's wires are bent along the underside of the lip and end at the back of the lip slot.

Test fitting the lip

Thanks, John. I know you have quite a bit of experience with the PVC. I used super-glue gel to laminate the body. I actually read some sort of test sheet that concluded that super glue is actually stronger than epoxies for joining PVC, so yeah - bonus.

Marty - I worked on the lip design tonight - but I'm not set on it, and I think I might try a few different things out. I wasn't completely happy with the shape so I'm going to re-cut tomorrow, but it's sort of a rectangular lip similar to the Sisson P-20 design, but with a surface area roughly the size of a DT-16. I'll post a pic as soon as I get it done.

Fantastic job - - always look forward to your posts!

Marty - since this is a prototype, I was considering actually gluing the ballast to the belly and moving it around (or possibly two separate ballasts, as some cranks use - to get a nose-down attitude)......then actually drilling when I'm happy with the response to confirm the location. Have you ever tried this or see any problems with it? I think I recall a guy from TU doing this sticky-weight thing on one of his protos. It seemed like an interesting idea to me at the time.

Marty - Bob, Thanks for the advice...you two are definitely my inspiration for wanting to try this out! I really spent a lot of time contemplating the material, and I hope I didn't shoot myself in the foot. The Sintra has a specific gravity of .50...which is fairly comparable to yellow cedar (~.45-.50). If I can't get the action I want out of the material, I'm going to switch to wood - perhaps hard balsa or paulownia. I'm not going to stop until it behaves exactly like I want it to. Easier said than done, huh.

Great job! I'm a fan of Table Rock Shad.

Not sure I quite understand.... The Sintra was 1/2" stock, so I laminated two pieces together to get enough thickness. I outlined the side profile onto the Sintra block from a pattern I had drawn and cut out earlier. Marked the lip slot and cut that first, then cut out the side profile. After that, I marked the curves of the top profile onto the top of the lure blank, then cut the blank vertically to get those lines. After that, it was just a bunch of carving and sanding.

Yes - - Sintra to be exact.

Decided to take the plunge and try to put one of these things together. This is the first time I've ever carved anything - and I must say, I have a new-found respect for you crankbait builders. I carved and sanded and carved and sanded and carved and sanded trying to keep this thing symmetrical. :-X Going to be a deep crank - designed around the 15' range. IF I can get it together correctly. Let the fun begin. ;D From bottom:

My first try at doing a baby bass pattern. Honestly, I don't even really care for baby bass patterns, but I figured it's one of those patterns that every painter has to do at some point.

Those look awesome, John!

Very nice - - I like the unique stencil pattern on the lower left bait.

John builds some really great stuff (one of the best flatsided cranks I own) - - his little cranks are also a trip (and flat-out catch bass on tough days!).

I just saw one of those old Dremel scroll saws (with the round side disc att.) at the pawn shop the other day. Almost bought it just because it was so cheap, but I didn't realize they worked well for cutting blanks (I read a big long post at TU where everybody said they don't like scroll saws! : )

I tried a Rick Clunn model shallow crank......I really doubt Rick had anything to do with the bait because it was completely lame. Maybe some their other models are better, but based on that bait, I don't think I'm going to drop any more money to find out. There are a lot of options out there.

It is a pic of the back of my guitar's headstock. I got a righteous set of open-geared locking tuners for it - and you know how I like shiny things. Just had to take a pic.

Hmmm - that sounds like a very good idea!