Creating Crankbaits
By Sabastion Perez
From the top
First I should tell you from my own experience that carving and assembling wooden lures is loads of fun. It's hard to say what's more fun, a good day fishing or carving up a lure that makes people think it's a real fish hanging on your line! I'll tell you this though when you put them both together, well its bliss!
Now lets begin by looking to the trees and finding wood that will work well for our little endeavor.
I have found red cedar to be the easiest to work with for several reasons. It is inexpensive and readily available. It also has a good casting weight .Cedar is also easy to sand and can leave you with a pretty smooth surface. This wood will make it easy for you to screw into but does split on occasion, if we're not careful. You can experiment with other types of wood like balsa, basswood or pine.
OK, now that we've selected our wood, we must decide on a shape and that depends on a few things. One is your target species, and it's average size, another is depth range and common forage during the season you'll likely be fishing.
Obviously if it's panfish you're after you're going to want to stick with a shape that's 2-inches or less. Unfortunately these are generally more difficult to make because any errors in the placement of the components is magnified relative to the overall body size. At least until you get the hang of things, stick with something at least 4-inches long, that seems to be a good overall size for lot's of different species of fish should you happen across one.
I've included a 4-in. pattern that you can print out for you to work from:
Trace the pattern onto a piece of cardboard and use this as your template for tracing onto your wood block. Use a piece of wood that's clean, free of knots and for this lure you'll need it to be 5/8" thick. Lay your template onto the wood and trace your lure shape.
The Craft
Now this is where it starts to get tricky, depending on your woodworking skills. If you own or have access to a scroll saw (about $100 in store), it'll make this job much easier, if not, the good old fashioned coping saw (about $10) always worked for me.
Note: Always wear safety glasses when working wood.
If you're using a coping saw, place your wood block in a vice in a way that you're most comfortable with. If you don't have a vice use a clamp. Now you want to make sure that you cut as evenly as possible and try to stay just on the outside of your line. After your shape is cut, check to make sure that it's even on both sides (especially if you cut by hand). Wood is cheap and if you're not satisfied write it off as practice and try again.
You must also cut the slot for the "lip" to slide into. This should be done before any carving so that the lure can lay flat on it's side if you're using the scroll saw or it will sit level in a vice if you use the coping saw. Either way you MUST be sure that the slot is perfectly perpendicular to the lure body. The slot in the pattern included shows the slot with 3/32" thickness. I have found this ideal for the our lure body. You can adjust the thickness to suit the plastic you may have available, however I would not go any thinner than 1/8".
Your lure should look just like this:
Now you should have 4 equally spaced sections on the top and bottom of your shape. Again using your middle finger as a chock, run a line equal in width to your sections along the curved edge on both sides of your shape.
The side view should look like this:
The bottom should look like this:
Now you'll need a carving knife and I don't mean the one that grandma used to carve the turkey. There are plenty of good carving knives you can buy in a wood working store and I use them exclusively. They're great for the job and you can even carve details into your lure for a more realistic looking 3D effect (I think this impresses your friends more than the fish). However all you really need to get the job done is a box cutting razor or something similar as long as it has a sharp blade.