what wood are carpenter lures made of

[michael north]

Just a quick question to all the carpenter god's on this forum,

What wood are carpenter lures made from?

I am thinking on turning some of my own lures for the novelty of it, and have been thinking I would use huon pine, as it has in incredibly tight grain and has such a high oil content it does not rot. After looking at one my lures from carpenter it appears that they are made of a similar timber, they also don't seem to be soaked in resin like other lures.

So what timber is it?

Regards,

Mick

[Mark Harris]

I reckon Tak or Brandon might know the precise answer. I do remember reading a while ago that it is a hard pine of some type.

Just in case you are interested in tropical hardwood options Mick, mahogany is excellent for lure making.

[Brandon Khoo]

Mick - this is just to let you now that we're not ignoring you per se - we just won't be responding to the question.

[michael north]

Ok brandon, I found that a little funny at first, but after some thought I guess density of materials plays a big part on the lures action/performance.

Mark, I have a decent supply on huon, its like turning butter, and it won't need to be soaked in resin, so huon it is but cheers for the advice, I believe adheck's lures are made from mahogany and I cannot fault their performance whatsoever. 

[Dustin Foo]

I'm interested both in lure making (resin heads for skirted trolling lures) and in timber but know very little about surface casting lures.  Can anyone tell me, in relation to density of the lure material - is it preferable for surface baits like chuggers etc.. to have some buoyancy?  What about stickbaits?  Does anyone here handcraft their own lures?  I'd love to see some home made hand crafted work. 

There are definitely some exquisitely beautiful tropical hardwoods out there and according to Wikipedia the Australian Allocasuarina has the world's hardest wood! 

[Bill Amaral]

I'm interested both in lure making (resin heads for skirted trolling lures) and in timber but know very little about surface casting lures.  Can anyone tell me, in relation to density of the lure material - is it preferable for surface baits like chuggers etc.. to have some buoyancy?  What about stickbaits?  Does anyone here handcraft their own lures?  I'd love to see some home made hand crafted work. 

There are definitely some exquisitely beautiful tropical hardwoods out there and according to Wikipedia the Australian Allocasuarina has the world's hardest wood!

I didn't know that about your 'bull oak' I had always thought that Lignum Vitae was the hardest, interesting.

For handcrafted lures you could check out Strategic Angler Custom Lures right here as seen on the opening page. It was interesting in seeing Merv develop those stick baits in the lure forum of 360 tuna; which is a good place to go to see plenty of lure eye candy including how to make your resin heads - though you might have to dig for that.
http://www.360tuna.com/forum/f87/

For the OP I'd check out Japanese Cypress if I were you. A number of high end Japanese lure makers utilize that wood, like Fisherman who readily states that fact on their site.

Bill