Lure design

Version one covers lipless surface and subsurface lures, chosen by nose type on a shared body.

Stickbait

A pointed or rounded nose with a small face for the line tie. Floating stickbaits walk and dart; sinking ones fall level or tail-down and swim on the drop.

Popper

A cupped face on a shorter, fuller body. It rests tail-down; face angle, cup size and depth, rim and chin decide whether it chugs, spits or skips.

Pencil popper

A long stickbait body with a small cup and heavy tail weight. It sits near vertical and thrashes its head when twitched.

The body is three curves — the plan-view outline (half-width), the back and the belly — plus cross-sections between them. Beginner sliders (length, depth, width, deepest point, section) rebuild the body; in advanced mode you can also edit every control point.

Round

Rolls easily and walks with little effort; needs weight low to stay upright.

Oval

Resists roll and glides wider on the pause; common on big stickbaits.

Teardrop (full belly)

Full belly, narrow back: a low centre of gravity that self-rights.

Flat-sided

Flat sides add flash and a belly-to-back roll.

Keeled belly

A V belly that tracks straight and damps roll.

Every lure is built round a stainless through-wire from the line tie to the tail eye, so a fish pulls on the wire, not the timber — screw eyes pull out of soft Paulownia. Belly hangers are wires from the through-wire out through the belly, twisted round it in a pocket. Each hook point is an eyelet, a split ring and a single or treble hook; sizes come from tables of heavy saltwater hooks and rings, and their weight is part of the buoyancy.

Balls of steel, lead, tungsten or brass sit in pockets below the wire, threaded on the wire (drilled balls), or above it as a last resort. A weight-transfer channel lets a ball roll aft for the cast. In beginner mode, choose a behaviour and rest angle and the app sizes and places the ballast for you.

The mass of the timber, coating, wire, ballast, hooks and rings is compared with the water the sealed lure displaces (salt or fresh). For a floater, the app finds the waterline at every angle and the attitude where buoyancy sits under the centre of gravity, choosing the most stable one — the rest angle. It also checks roll stability and estimates the sink rate of a sinker. Use your own Paulownia density: weigh a sample block.

Checks compare the design with your tools and the timber: wire groove against the smallest ball-nose bit, cup radius against the finishing bit, thin ends, walls round pockets and anything breaking through the skin, overlapping balls, hooks that can foul each other, and a lure that floats in the sea but sinks in fresh water. Many offer a one-click fix.

In the 3D pane, switch to Water tank and drag on the water to pull the line; flick for a twitch and let go to pause. The lure is simulated from the same mass and buoyancy data, with simplified drag, so it is for comparing designs — tank-test the real lure.

The 3D view shows the lure as it will look finished. Out of the box that is raw Paulownia, with the pale, straight grain of the blank running along the lure; a 3D printed lure shows as plain plastic. Under Lure → Finish you can paint it instead: pick a back colour and a belly colour and they blend down the flanks, the way a lure is sprayed, with an optional scale pattern (fine, medium or large) over the sides.

With eye recesses on, a stick-on 3D eye sits in each pocket, in gold, silver, red, chartreuse or black. The recess size and position are set under Build → Material and tooling → Eyes.

The finish is a preview. It does not change the cutting or printing files or the buoyancy — paint and eyes are a few tenths of a gram, inside the coating allowance — and the scales are painted on, not cut into the body.

Load a side and a top photo in the Trace panel, set the scale from the lure's measured length, and press Auto-trace to fit the curves to the silhouette. Plain paper behind the lure works best; trace the side view first.