Custom Baits Magazine | Page 13

Marking Out The Lures Now that I have some templates it's time to mark out the wooden lure blanks and crack on with making my lures. The first step I took was to place my lure templates onto a piece of wood and trace around them to give me the outline of the lure - this is the line I would be cutting to. In this case I'm using 22mm thick poplar for my lures for no reason other than that I have lots of scraps of the stuff lying around my workshop. I have not seen anyone else use or mention poplar as a lure making material but it has similar properties to pine in that it is light and easy to work with so it should be ok. Poplar may turn out to be a useless wood for lure mak- After I cut out the lure bodies in this manner I noticed ing but I feel that the trial and error method of learning that the edges of the lure blanks were quite rough and how to do something is probably the best way to learn. required some sanding to smooth them off a little. I did not get too carried away with this initial sanding as the lures will get a proper sanding at a later stage. Cutting Out the Lure Blanks The next step is to go ahead and cut out the lure body. I did this using a coping saw by clamping the wood to the edge of a workbench with a quick-grip clamp and moving the position of the clamp periodically as necessary while cutting to the pencil line on the wood blank.