Category Archives: Making Wooden Lures

How to Make a Balsa Jerkbait

Today you’re going to learn how to make a balsa jerkbait from scratch.

Jerkbaits are a staple in fishing. They have become popular for pursuing a number of different species of fish across a huge number of countries.

The “How to Make a Balsa Jerkbait” video tutorial below is from YouTube user “Splish Splash”. He does a great job of walking us, step-by-step, through the entire process of making the bait and making it easy to understand and follow.

The lure maker starts by explaining that he prefers to cut several pieces of balsa, instead of just cutting what is sufficient for making one jerkbait. He saves time doing it this way because it saves him from having to trace the pattern onto other pieces of wood later on.

Then, it’s on to cutting the balsa wood by hand, a coping saw. Due to balsa wood being soft, cutting by hand is very easy and doesn’t take long at all. Cutting by hand also gives you much better control of the saw, so there is less chance of making major mistakes while cutting 😉

After cutting them, the pieces are then sanded by hand. This smooths the edges of the wood and make the pieces uniform in shape and size.

Creating a throughwire for your jerkbait Next, it’s on to outfitting the lure body with a through-wire. To assist with making this easier, he has actually created a special wire bender to help shape the wire perfectly for the lure that’s being made. The video shows us the tool, so you can make one too, if you choose to do so. Using the through-wire construction, a one-piece connection is created for every piece of hardware on this bait.

After bending the wire, braided fishing line is then used to secure the parts of the wire together and keep it straight while working with it and rigging it in your new jerkbait body. The wire is then set into the body using nothing more than hand pressure. No power tools required!

Next, it’s on to adding weights to the lure. Homemade lead bars are used, which are cut to length by hand and then inserted into the two halves of the bait, using holes that are cut into the inside of the lure body using an exacto knife. Again, no power tools are utilized.

Now it’s time to assemble your new Jerkbait!

Water-resistant glue is used to hold the two halves of the body together, as well as holding the weights and through-wire in place as the two halves are put together. Once they’re glued together, a clamp is used to hold everything in place while the glue dries thoroughly.

shaping the edges of your jerkbait Now comes the fun part of shaping the lure to get it just right. The specs for the final thickness of the lure are found in the PDF file that we’ve linked to below. They are also mentioned in the video tutorial.

Keep in mind as you shape your lure that balsa is extremely soft, so very little pressure is required when sanding or carving!

Being too aggressive can cause the lure to be ruined by taking too much wood off with one swipe of your knife or one motion with the sandpaper!

Once the lure is shaped and you’re happy with the way it looks, it’s time to apply some epoxy to seal the body and make it waterproof. This is done using Envirotex epoxy that gets applied by hand, using a small brush. Once the epoxy is applied, the lure is rotated on a small homemade device. The rotation keeps the epoxy from dripping or forming hardened drips on the actual lure body.

Be sure to pay close attention to the tip that is shared, showing us how to eliminate bubbles in the epoxy base coat!

A little touch of sandpaper is used to smooth the epoxy base coat, and then another layer of epoxy is added. Once the second layer of epoxy has had time to harden, it’s time to paint!

finished jerkbait Painting can be done using several different methods; brush, airbrush, spray can or even some other way of applying the paint. For best results, an airbrush is recommended. But since this is your lure, you decide how to paint it!

And of course, once the lure is painted, it’s back to the final 3-5 layers of epoxy topcoat, to protect that awesome paint work that you just did.

Add some hooks and split rings and you’re ready to fish!

For a free lure stencil that you can print and cut out, click here

Items used for this project:

Balsa Lure Bodies (in case you don’t want to carve your own)
Stainless Steel Wire
Lure Eyes
Split Rings
Treble Hooks
Epoxy Top Coat

To see a great video of these lures in action, catching Northern Pike in brackish water, click here

If you enjoyed this post, please be sure to like it and share it with your friends.

And, as always, if you need any kind of lure-making supplies, be sure to visit our website, at http://lurepartsonline.com

How to Make a Wooden Fishing Lure on a Lathe

For today’s article, you’ll be learning how to make a wooden fishing lure on a lathe. British lure maker Paul Adams will be your host and instructor 🙂

Paul shows us how to build the Fat Head Wiggler, an old-school wooden swimming lure with a metal diving lip. He begins by teaching us how to prepare the template and the wood, cutting the template out and gluing it to a sheet of veneer to get started.

Once preparing the template is finished, Paul sets about the task of actually creating the lure in earnest, showing us how to cut the wood into the proper size and then mark the center of each end in preparation for securing it in the lathe.

Once we get past these few little steps, the power tools come alive and we see sawdust and wood chips flying everywhere as Paul begins to shape the wood.

How to Make a Wooden Fishing Lure on a Lathe

Paul works his skills on a wood lathe to shape the lure

Watching Paul work the lathe is amazing. He also shows us how he uses calipers to measure the wood, to be sure it’s the correct diameter and shape. Again, precision is evident in his methods and workmanship.

And, of course, once the desired size and shape are attained, Paul goes about sanding the wood body to get a perfectly smooth surface, to be painted later on. It’s amazing to watch how the various tools come into play to create the finished product.

There is a wide variety of power tools that are used in this video, including a wood lathe, a drill press, a band saw and a dremel. Other items used include sandpaper, epoxy, paint and various pieces of hardware to finish the lure. We have listed all of the hardware items below the video.

Sealing the lure protects the wood body from water damage

When Paul makes a homemade lure, he typically uses very few, if any, factory-made components. This is a great way to make something that you can say is 100% handmade and your own workmanship.

Some people, though, like to save time, or may not have all of the tools necessary to create the components themselves, so they opt to buy them and then assemble the lure. Either way, you end up with a nice lure that can’t be bought anywhere else.

To complete the lure in the video, Paul fabricates the diving lip from aluminum, creates the belly weight out of steel rod and even hand-draws a black & white emblem to put on the sides of the lure.

Paul is a true craftsman and artisan who has lots of creativity and uses it to create great lures and then teach others how to do the same thing.

So go ahead and enjoy the video below and be sure to check out the list of items needed, at the Lure Parts Online website.

Here’s a list of materials used, as well as links to them on the Lure Parts Online website.

Wood Lure Blanks
Stainless Steel Split Rings
Treble Hooks
Metal Diving Lips
Stainless Steel Screw Eyes
Epoxy Topcoat
Vinyl Lure Paint

You can check out Paul’s blog by Clicking Here.

If you enjoyed this tutorial, please be sure to share it with others.

How to Make a Fishing Lure From a Wooden Paint Brush Handle

Making a lure from a paint brush handle – A work in progress

It’s no secret that fishing lures can be made from a variety of materials. Wood, plastic, & metal are just a few on the list. And within each of those materials, there is a list of sub-materials, if you will, that can be used.

There’s poly resin, soft plastic, PVC to start the plastic material list.

For wood, there’s balsa, pine, cedar, jelutong and a host of other types of tree-based materials.

When it comes to metal materials for lure making, there’s brass, copper, stainless steel, aluminum and many others.

So you can see that the list of possibilities when it comes to what to make a fishing lure from is pretty unlimited. It is, in fact, limited only by your imagination.

In this month’s blog post we’re going to show you how to make a wood lure from a regular, everyday 1 1/2 – 2 inch wooden paintbrush handle. Doing this will save you a ton of time when it comes to carving and shaping the lure body, since a large portion of the work has already been done at the paintbrush factory.

Creating and assembling this lure will require only some basic tools, which we’ll cover in the actual tutorial. We will also give you a link to a list of those tools at the end of this article, so you’ll know ahead of time exactly what tools you’ll need.

We will also be showing you how to foil your lure for a more natural, realistic look that will reflect light and catch the attention of the fish you’re after. Foiling sounds hard to a lot of people, but Paul Adams shows exactly how it’s done in the video below.

One of the cool things about using this method is that you don’t need a lathe to shape the lure and the amount of hand-shaping and sanding that’s needed is minimal. This saves you a lot of time and work, so you can focus more on the finish work and get out fishing with it more quickly 🙂

Finished paint brush handle fishing lure

The end result is a lure that sinks and can be worked at just about any depth, making it a very versatile lure for many species of fish. Once you’ve made your first one of these you can experiment with the weighting on any subsequent lures of this type that you make, to achieve different sink rates.

Don’t be afraid to use your imagination once you’ve gotten this lure-making method down. A few little tweaks here and there can give you very different results when it comes to the action of this lure.

In the video tutorial below, you’ll learn how to cut the handle off of the paint brush at the proper angle, mark the “lure body” for drilling and weighting, insert weights, screw eyes and other hardware, sand the body slightly and then prep it for foiling.

Paul will walk you through the foiling process, step by step, and then on to painting your lure and getting it ready to fish with.

So check your cupboards or closets and see if you might have an old wooden paint brush laying around that’s no longer of use. You might just be able to recycle it and make a great fishing lure from it!

Enjoy the video 🙂

List of Tools and Materials Needed – Click Here