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Originally Posted by BigFish
I believe its all moot once you add either belly weight and/or the swivel and belly/tail hooks.  |
nope, not so true Larry
back when BM and I started making needles, we test floated them in salt water in a bucket to see how they sat and how they sunk and how fast or slow the sunk. Then we used the same water to float round blanks that were destined to be swimmers, because even doing the roll test on a flat surface like the tablesaw, they still were not quite right. Jigman is correct about the density of the grain being different in different parts of the wood, even from the same sticks. It is much more accurate to float the wood, there is nothing wrong with raised grain, once dry, it sands smooth. Hooks and belly weights are not enough to compensate for some discrepincies in the wood density on some plugs. It might seem like a picky thing to do, but it gets results. If I made bottle swimmers, I would definately float them before any cutting or drilling. If you ever made pikies with small knots in the wood, you'd see that it matters where they are.
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When i mark my belly holes with a pencil spinning on the lathe, it will hit on the high sides and not the low. I would think if you drilled the belly holes on the high side that would be the heaviest side of the plug and lay down on that side."
Dave, not neccesarilly.
take some round stock, now sand a flat spot along one side all along it's length. flaot it and see how it sits