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The
Mother of All Tackle Autopsies - Cutting Open a 400 Dollar Swimbait!
(continued)
 The
autopsy started with a look at the underbelly where I found it extremely
difficult to extract the metal hook hanging hardware. Many hard bodied swimbaits
utilize screw-in hardware but no matter how much I rotated the loops all I could
expose was more wire. To see just how far this wire extended into the body I
realized that it would be necessary to crack open this bait completely.
Sanding the
Mother's belly reveals wooden inserts, what could be underneath?
The top of the
bait has no inserts
We cut the wires as far back as we possibly could and proceeded to sand off the
paint to reveal a series of varying dark circles which were made out of wood
pegs. I could immediately tell the density of these pegs was different than the
rest of the bait.
The are belly
of the Mother
This was further verified as we proceeded to slice through the bait with a
cutting bit. The dark wooden areas were much denser than the lighter wood used
throughout the bait. Beneath the dark spots I could also detect contact with
something even harder. We had finally reached the embedded weight system.
The dark
wooden inserts have a much greater density than the body of the bait
It was at this point that I also grasped that the Dremel just wasn’t going to
get this job done. The bait was too thick and much too hard in the center for
this tool I grabbed the Sonic Crafter. The vibration blade was able to get
through the center part of the bait though it took plenty of pressure to cut
into the solid bodied Mother. At some points the bait even started smoking as
the friction from the blade burned the Mother as it slowly worked its way
through the bait’s core.
Power tools
are required for this autopsy
Something is
burning!
After twenty minutes I finally had a clean cut through both sides of the bait
and removed it from the clamp. The moment of truth….and with a little prying I
was able to separate the two halves and immediately understood why it had been
so difficult to extract the hardware.
Cutting into
the belly I can feel solid metal
Next Section: Finally a look into the heart of the Mother...  |
