The Fire

Friday 19th June 2020

View from our garden

I was picking tomatoes with my friends Kai and Daisy in the vegetable garden when we smelled smoke. We climbed a tall tree and saw a giant cloud of smoke. We went inside for lunch and when we came back outside the sky was orange and the sun a red ball...

Ten minutes later burnt leaves and ash were raining down. My Dad went up to the track to see where the fire was and it was just on the other side of the road!

View from our track

We took our cat, Skip, and shoved him in his cat carrier and evacuated to my friends' house, where we all stayed the night. Skip had to sleep shut in the bathroom because of my friends' dog Ozzy.

My friend Kai looking out from his balcony

View from the top of our friends' road

In the morning the fire had mostly died down. We went back home: a lot of the surrounding area was burnt, but luckily our house and land was fine. 

Burnt land across the road from our house

Burnt out truck

We later discovered that the fire was caused by a strimmer spark landing in dry grass 10 km away up the valley. The fire burned through 2200 hectares. We were lucky but 30 families lost their homes to the fire.

An introduction to making wooden fishing lures

A fishing lure imitates the prey to a predatory fish e.g. small fish, small mammals etc.. Lures are made of various materials like wood, plastic, rubber and metal, but I am going to show you how to make them out of wood.

Tools for lure making

Basic tools

Slimmed down to the very basics, all you really need is: a knife, a saw, a pencil, a drill and a ruler. But if you want to make more professional lures, things will be more expensive and harder to get. 

Personally I do not have very specifically niche equipment. I have only three other things that I did not say: a band saw, a Dremmel rotary tool, and a Shinto rasp/wood file.

Band saw

Materials for lures

Wood - you will need a reasonably soft type, like pine or balsa. I use cedar and pine.

Glue - you need two bottles of superglue: one with a brush and the other with a dripper.

Baking soda - for making filler by mixing with superglue.

Wire - for twisting into lure eyes.

Split rings - to join hook to lure eye.

Treble hooks, in a variety of sizes to give you the best hook up ratio on your lure.

Lexan polycarbonate - for if you are making a diving lure.

Split shot - for keeping your lure stable in the water.

Sandpaper - to smooth your lures to achieve a good surface before painting.

Split shot and superglue

Painting lures

There are three main ways to paint lures: brush, spray can and airbrush. I use a mixture of spray can and brush (I don't have an airbrush). I also use acrylic paint pens (all paints need to be acrylic). You also need a clear coat or clear nail varnish to make your lure fully waterproof.



In this post I have explained what a lure is, and what you need in order to make one. In the next post in this series, I will show you how to actually make a fishing lure. 

Some of my home made lures