Damaged Bill

[petah]

Hi guys,

I would like to have your opinions about the following:

a friend of mine recently bought a H13, knowing that the bill is a bit damaged. Faced with the lure, he noticed that another of his H13 has got the same damage in the same place.





To your knowledge, is there a specific series of the H13 which have this kind of damage, or is it just coincidence? If not a specific series, what could have caused damage like this besides human barbarism?

[wallcat]

I never seen it ever on any H-13's NIB but it does happen if you grab the lip with a pair of pliers while fishing.

[Jason]

It is hard for me to see in this picture , but Id say that was done in the factory . They tank test all the lures and if they dont swim true , they do some grinding on the bill to make it right . I see it allot more on the older lures .

I break my original floater bills all the time when ripping for browns . But usually they snap clean off . So Im not sure what else could cause what youve shown .

J

[italy - Predator&Co.]

Hi Petah,

99% Probably the lure were glue in Rapala Display Board.

[petah]

Thanks for the reply!
Jason's explanation I think is most plausible.
With all due respect, Andrea, but when a lure would have been taken of a board like the sweet one you show, the lure would certainly have been damaged on other places as well, wouldn't it? Besides, then the bill would have been damaged in an other way. I think it would have been grinded flat to the side.
I can't discard Shanes explanation either. It certainly is possible that the previous owner was handling his H13 babies in a barbaric way... Who can tell?

[10tacle]

Jason is right.
Some time ago I had read an article about the whole fabrication and tuning in the factory. As they described the doing of that woman on the testing tank they wrote: "Instead of tuning the eye with a plier I'm using a knife to cut the bill in the correct form. Thats much easier for me to tune the lures but it needs a lot of experience."

If the lure was from a display board the bills are often cut by a quarter or so to fit the lures tight to the backplane. A shop owner and collector told me, formerly they used pegs to mount the lures as some shops began to dissect the boards and sell the lures. Later they cut of pieces from the bill to make the lures unfishable and simply glued on the backplane. Thats the background.

[cdj711]

Hi Peter.

I have a few NIB lures which show the same groove on the lip.

I think they use a file, but it could well be a very sharp knife too, to take away a piece of the lip while running them in the tank test. As Jason said seems to be pretty common on older lures in unsealed boxes. Havent seen it much on new production. The mills cutting out the space for the lip are run by computers now, while in the 70s or 80s they were probably cut by hand.
If the lip is that much out of center I think it is not possible to adjust the lure with turning the nose ring sideways and keep it running true while fishing. So the "cut" is a more permanent adjustment, but just as Jörg said, you need a lot of experience to do this.

The lures on the boards are planed on the backside to make them lying flat on the boards. You can see the wood on the back of the lure. Had a board here with magnums where some came off during shipping and probably old age of the glue.

I also had this idea to recycle them for fishing but didnt know someone was faster again.

wolfgang

[Jason]

I have some pretty old display boards that I looked at this morning and they had to do allot of shaving on these to get them down flat .
It would indeed require replacing the bill in oder to fish these.

[wallcat]

Nice info from the group ;D Cheers

[petah]

Thanks a lot for the info people, spoken for my friend as well!