nice grain on some sealed blanks.

[scottw]

I have a question regarding the hydro-orientation, if you determine the high point by hydro-orientating and then remove a sizeable amount of wood as you do with a darter or slopeheads, wouldn't that change the orientation even slightly? the grains are not straight, or is the change small enough to be insignificant or off-set with a little weight in the belly? just curious...is the ho just getting you as close as possible to the most favorable orientation even if it is altered slightly through drilling and trimming?

[Tagger]

Originally Posted by scottw

..is the ho just getting you as close as possible to the most favorable orientation even if it is altered slightly through drilling and trimming?

Yes ,,To my thinking exactly what you said ,.. HO just gives you an idea what your dealing with, before you start with that piece of wood. Like we all suspected, every piece is different, even out of the same stick .. Some pieces "the force" is weak ,, may not matter,,some pieces "the force" is very strong. I wouldn't want that on the side of an unweighted darter. At plugfest a few years ago,I brought some round blanks i had totally sealed and a pan of water. I was accused of weighting blanks by a couple of guys to make them flip the way they were.. Probably best just to round out,seal and test a few blanks to see how much it matters to you . It matters most on big wood .Nikes ,unweighted or lightly weighted swimmers,, unweighted darters.. I had a bottle plug I had to hang a vmc 5/0 off the bottom to keep it from flipping ,, so probably bottles too .. havn't gotten there yet ..

[scottw]

good stuff...thank you!

[Diggin Jiggin]

Its funny, but if you think of it as finding the light side and having that be up, then the heavy side is on the bottom as a keel. Now you cut the face of the darter, and mostly you are removing material from the top of that long slope going 1/2 way back down the length of theplug, which is mostly removing material from the light side, so its even lighter on that side and I'd think that would amplify the effect of the heavy side...