Ideas for small manufacturing facilities abound.
1 --> The wood used seems to be Alaskan Yellow Cedar, which raises issues of good light, strong woods.
2 --> It is accurately cut, centred and square in the lathe.
3 --> Notice the transparent hood and vacuum powered dust extractor over the shaping tool mount.
4 --> It is obvious that a template is guiding the cutting action, as the hand pushes a handle. This allows accurate reproduction of cuts.
5 --> Some jigs would help with accuracy on drilling for hook hangers, for the weight in the belly, and for the through-wire.
6 --> It seems the lead pouring machine is programmed to deposit a precise quantity, similar to modern paint mixing machines.
7 --> This weight in teh belly both helps to provide a keel reducing tendency to roll and spin out of control, and it helps control where the centre of gravity/mass of the lure will be, which means it will tend to pivot around the belly, wobbling attractively.
8 --> In this context the use of a light, strong, easily turned wood -- Alaskan Yellow Cedar is a favourite of small lure manufacturers (and for lighter lures, balsa and basswood) -- creates a tendency of strong buoyancy, which can then be managed through insertion of a keeling weight.
9 --> It also makes for a lure that tends to be lively, as the moment of inertia about the centre of mass will be lowish. Remember, this sort of lure is so fine tuned, that its depth of swimming, to several feet in some cases, can be controlled by slightly bending the horizontal line tie loop at the front up or down. (Bending the lip, which is much harder to do right, is NOT recommended for amateurs.)
10 --> In terms of engineering, such lures are mostly designed and developed on an intuition, general rule of thumb and trial and error basis. (A set of likely candidates is tested and viewed with an experienced eye, with the fish allowed their vote. A successful version is then standardised and manufactured.)
11 --> Plastic versions can te4hn be developed to have more standardised performance, but will normally be a bit different in behaviour. (Of course, no two wooden lures will be the same, and it is notorious that some will be hot and some, duds, though they come from the same series by the same manufacturer. Small variations in the wood and the manufacturing make potentially big differences.)
12 --> A wood version Magna Strike Predator would be an interesting project:
13 --> As would be a standard darter (which is notoriously ticklish, but can be very productive):
Ideas for light manufacturing based on wood turning. END
