I finally got an olive color I really like, thanks guys. Lots of good info out there...

The big danny was a part of a batch of repaints from last year, it comes preloaded with mojo & teeth marks. The thin danny is one from a new batch of slim ones I'm working on...

The minnow type swimmers have been something I've been thinking about for along time, and they were heavily influenced by some of Jigman's stuff. Once I started messing with the Lexan I knew I could get what I wanted so I've been working on them for the past month or so. I've been thru a LOT of prototypes, lots of lip angles and lots of lip sizes and shapes before I got what I wanted.

These ones will stay up on top and will only go down maybe 6" in moderate current. They are just under 6" long and 1.5 oz and have an insanely tight wiggle to em. Looking at the pics the lips look a little oversized, but thats because of how they are weighted and they carry the heavy 3/0 6x vmc trebles. :hihi:

While messing with these I figured out some nice shortcuts on how to rough these out pretty quick. I can post some pics tomorrow if anyone wants to see.

they look great, we'd love to know more about handcarves:claps:

Slick stuff. Looks like you got your epoxy woes licked. What did do? Nice little swimmers, by the way. Little plugs with big hooks have a niche. I have a friend, now a very old man, who took a 50+ years ago on a special CreekChub model (707sw) which was 4" long, thru wired, and carrying heavy hooks.

nice job on the gibbs copycats.... wire is much better then screw eye's that were used way back when.........those will catch:claps:

I finally got an olive color I really like

me too!:kewl:

ok, to rough these out quick here's what I was doing.

I took a 2' lenghth of ayc and cut it down the middle on the bandsaw so I had to 3/4 thick pieces. then I hit the cut surfaces real quick on the belt sander to take the marks out from the saw blade.

Then you basically make a stencil of the shape you want and see how many you can fit on one board. You want the belly of the plug on the outside of the board. Alternate them from one side to the other and I was able to fit 2 on one side , 3 on the other. Depends on how big you want them.

Now you take the board over to the router table and with a 3/8 round over bit, round over both the sides.

It should now look like this...

Now you need to drill the holes for the belly hooks and the weights. Thats why you needed the belly on the outside. Mark the location of the belly holes from your template and drill the belly holes.

Once your belly holes are drilled it's over to the bandsaw to cut the board lengthwise between the plugs.

Now you need to take the 2 halves and put them over the end of the belt sander and take the marks from the saw blade out and see how close to the lines you can get.

Once the curves are all smooth, its back to the router table to do the curved side. Go slow on the curved side and don't try to take it all off at once. Do 2 or 3 the passes raising the bit each time. On the curved side the ayc wants to tear.

Now we're almost done. Over to the bandsaw to cut them out, and then you need to round over the front.

To do this I was using the rotary sanding disk on my sander and just spinning at against the disk at the same angle as the cut on the bottom of the chin. The reason I have a flat section on the head is to make it easier to drill. When you sand the head, leave a flat area big enough to hold the nose grommet.

Then I was removing some of the tail stock on the belt just to slim it down a bit..

From there its basically thru drill, cut the lip slots on the table saw, and then some hand sanding to clean any rough spots from the router and from the rough sanding on the belt/disc sander.