Marlin lure makeover

[Patudo]

"If you make or modify a lure" it says on top...

I'd had this old Williamson cupped face lure lying around for ages, but never felt like fishing it.  I'm not a fan of this style lure in general, and it just never called out to me to fish it, the way other lures do. 

I'd been looking at it as it sat on the shelf, thinking how it could be reshaped, and finally decided to give it a go. The worst that'd happen would be that I'd write off a lure I'd never use anyway, so... 

Pic 1: This was how it started out.  You need to be a bit touched in the head to take a perfectly good marlin lure and potentially screw it up completely...

The shape I wanted to turn it into was an angled slant head.  I'd normally cut the angle with a hacksaw, but with such a short head, I thought that'd be too imprecise. 

I hate, hate, hate using a file for this job, especially on large lures. About halfway through the job I was starting to reconsider the wisdom of the whole project.  But the only thing I hate more is leaving a job undone. 

Pic 2: That's not a bill mark - that's a file stroke gone awry.  A belt sander would have done the job in five bleedin' minutes. 

After cutting the angle I thought the taper of the head seemed a bit ... clumsy.  Time to proceed to step 2 of the makeover...

(TBC)

PS. can any kind soul tell me how to put the pics in the body of the text and not have them repeat at the foot of the post?

[Gfish]

The file stroke gives it a realistic character.

[Squidder Bidder]

Who was the maker of the lure?

[pjstevko]

Williamson

[Patudo]

The rest of the operation went pretty quickly.  About 20 minutes on the lathe to get it trued up (a surprising number of commercial lure heads are not that fantastic in this respect), cut the deeper forward and back taper I wanted, reduce and reshape the tail piece, and do the final sanding down and polishing. 

While checking the lure for "truth" I took the opportunity to get the face as flat as I could make it, with a flat file and then with wet & dry on a flat surface.  There's a shallow depression above the leader hole but it's not too bad - I'll probably fill it in with a bit of epoxy during my next rod building project. 

I'd really like to see how the darn thing runs, but not living in Hawaii, I can't exactly drag it around next weekend.  Just gonna have to wait till I get back to La Isla. 

[Bill B]

Looks great!