Hey! Sam Bennett!since 1975

If you made it through part one of the walkthrough you’ll have a good idea of what it took to form the wooden body of the balsa bait. If you’re just tuning in you can have a gander at part one right here. Here’s where we left off:

I’ve formed the body of the balsa crankbait and sanded it with 400 grit sandpaper. This is very close to the final profile. Once the bait has the belly weights installed and has been filled with wood putty there will be another opportunity to fine tune the shape. I like to sand the bait after each stage to get the oil from my hands out of the wood. I suppose you could wear gloves, but I don’t.

For the ballast there are a few options. The first is to drill a hole into the bait and the second is to take out a big chunk of wood from the belly. I’ve done it both ways and I prefer to have more room to work on the guts of the bait, so I remove a big hunk. This will give a bit more flexibility when I configure the throughwires and belly weights. I mark it off with my x-acto knife and remove wood slowly.

This is one of the dicey steps of the build. It doesn’t take a whole lot to crack the front part of the bait off, as you can see from the amount of material left between the lip slot and the belly cut. Not a big deal, just be careful.

Next I cut the throughwire slot with my x-acto knife.

I’ve been thinking about how much ballast to add to this bait during the build. I’ve got a 20 gram egg sinker that I cut in two. I’ll use the smaller half, which weighs 6.5 grams. How do you know how much weight to add? The most important factors for any crankbait are the angle of the lip, the position of the line tie and the amount and placement of ballast weights.

How much ballast to add can be solved with some simple science. Weighing the body of the wooden crankbait doesn’t do any good – what we need to know is the weight of the water that the bait displaces. Archimedes Principle. Science! What you need to do is this:

• Fill a cup to the very top with water and place it into a larger cup or shallow saucer.
• Weigh the larger cup, or tare your scale to the larger cup.
• Get a safety pin and poke it into your bait.
• Push the bait under water.
• Water will spill out from the first cup into the second.
• The weight of that water that was displaced will tell you how much weight to add to make your bait neutrally buoyant. That’ll get you a suspending bait.
• From neutral buoyancy you can add or subtract weight to make the bait float or sink.

Wow! That sounds like a huge pain in the arse! It really isn’t as long as you have a decent digital scale. If you’re going to make crankbaits it’s an essential tool. Guessing will get you something but probably not what you expect.

Keep in mind that neutral buoyancy has to take everything you add to the bait into account – the throughwire, the ballast, the bill, the split rings, the hooks, the paint and the topcoat. And in this case the wood filler as well. I hadn’t taken the wood filler into account when I cut the belly weight.

While I was pondering weights and measures I formed the throughwire. I’m not the most exacting wire former, as you can see. I take a “good enough for rock n roll” approach. I was over looking at the Sims Spinners site from a guy who makes inline spinners. Now those boys could give a lesson on wire bending. And they’re local Chicago folks who drop in over at Windy City Fishing from time to time.

There’s no real mysticism in making the bends. You need a tail loop and a belly loop to attach the split rings to the hook. Guys who make lots of the same style of baits generally make a jig that allows them to make exact bends every time.

You’ll notice I left 2 long ends on the front of the throughwire. I’ll poke that into the body of the bait and epoxy it in tight. Does it make a difference? I don’t know. It makes me feel better.

Now I’m starting to worry about the wood filler. Fuck! I want this one to be a floater and too much weight is going to ruin my day. I placed the weight anyhow but finally decided to go another route.

I placed the throughwire and went with smaller weights stacked on either side if the throughwire. This brought the overall ballast down for 6.5 to 5 grams. That’s what I’m guessing the wood filler will weigh, 1.5 grams. I’m erring on the side of “more floaty” rather than “more sinky.” The stacked weights also allow me to make sure the bait runs straight and is balanced. Or at least that’s what I tell myself.

Epoxy time! I use Devcon 2 Ton, 30 Minute Epoxy. Don’t use the 5 minute. Just trust me. While I’m at it I’m going to epoxy the lipless crankbait together and also set the lip in the minnow I made. After that it’s time for wood filler, final sanding, undercoat, paint and topcoat.

It’s September. The water is down on the Fox and the current is slow. Temps are fluctuating between 62 and 72 degrees. Perfect day for some smallies on the Fox. Time to get out of the shop and into some waders.

Here’s Boogaloo with his 20″ smallie that walloped a chug bug. Which has got us both thinking… wouldn’t it be cool to make a few topwater balsa baits this winter? Yeah, yeah. So how would it need to sit in the water? Wonder if a weight transfer system could be built into a balsa bait… so, until next time. Here’s to Level IV – catching fish your way. And overthinking it whenever possible.

A few disclaimers, to start. I’ve been making balsa crankbaits for about a year now. I’m by no means an expert, but I have been able to make lures that swim properly. A quick look around the Interwebs will produce as many opinions on this topic as you care to read.

Secondly – I make balsa baits for myself, not for resale. These are handmade. Each one is slightly different. I like that about them. You may not.

I’m a minimalist in the tools department and not a previously experienced woodworker. This process is heavily informed by the tools I had on hand when I first started. It is also informed by the way I found I liked to work with wood. My methods embrace these constraints.

My job down at WeAreMammoth is extremely detail-oriented. Making crankbaits is my escape from hardcore measurement. These instructions are more like getting a recipe from your grandmother than a schematic from an engineer.

In closing, this works well for me but your mileage may vary.

That being said… off we go.

1. Make a template. Some folks trace a crankbait that they want to emulate. I find that a good shape is fairly easy to free-hand. I like to cut mine out of manila folders. In addition to the shape, I’ve made a few marks for the lip slot, ballast and where the line & hook ties will go. You don’t have to do this.

2. Mark your profile shape on the block. I don’t worry much about maximizing the number of baits I can get out of a chunk of wood, but you certainly could if you wanted.

3. These are my tools. The little coping saw came from American Science & Surplus in Geneva. Great store. The x-acto knife was inherited from my grandfather. I sharpen it before I use it.

4. Cut the block. Not too close unless you’re quite skilled with a coping saw. Balsa is soft so go slow.

5. I took a few more whacks at the balsa to get closer to the profile shape. You’ll notice it looks lumpy and imperfect. It is. That’s OK.

I need to decide how thick I want the bait. I work in millimeters. I want this bait to be 40 mm thick, so I’ll cut it to 44 to start. The thickness is based (in part) on how I want the lip to fit. I measure the lip with my ruler at the point I want it to emerge from the bait. From there I settled on 40 mm.

Acrylic lips are a pain to make so I buy mine. Some people custom cut Lexan lips. They are also difficult to make so I don’t bother.

6. I cut the block to 44 mm thickness. Give or take a millimeter.

7. Sand the profile with 180 grit sandpaper. Not too close, though.

8. The curve on the underside of the tail is the hardest bit to sand. I tear off a smaller piece of sandpaper and wrap it around my finger. I use my finger like a file. I have used other objects as a sanding block before. Balsa is very delicate. I’ve found my finger gives the best control.

9. I sand the flat, cut side of the bait down from 44 mm to 40 mm. I take the bait and gently sand it in a radial motion which helps with uniformity. Don’t press down too hard. 180 grit eats balsa very quickly. I get it down to a uniform 40 mm quite easily this way. (This method allowed me to be imprecise in step #6.)

10. Mark the lip slot for angle and depth. It takes some practice to know exactly how this will affect the bait. This is one of the most important decisions you have to make. Look at baits you like and how they run. Try out something similar until you understand how this works. You may fuck up a few baits based on this decision. That’s OK.

11. I cut the lip slot with my x-acto. You can use a saw if you like. You’ll notice it’s not perfect. That’s OK. This gets fixed later.

12. Mark the center line. That’s 20 mm for this bait. This is a visual reference when you start to sand the profile. It doesn’t have to be perfect but should be close.

13. Mark the profile. Again, this is just a visual reference while you sand.

14. Give her a good sanding with the ol’ 180. Get the rough shape you’re going for and then… stop. Don’t go too far. You’ll be refining the profile with 240, 320 and then 400 grit. That’s when I get a tad more concerned with exactness. I like to pop the lip in at this point and hack on the lip slot if necessary.

15. Old Milwaukee Time. This is as far as I got and probably a good place to stop and let you think about the process. I’ll post a follow-up soon where I finish the bait profile and get it ready for sealing. If I’m not stopping to take pictures I can get a bait to this point in about 20 minutes.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned. Questions? Drop ‘em on Twitter. @NPRneck