Handmade fishing lures - Screw in eyelets

With a little practice its possible to make a screw. If you bend your wire into an eyelet, its possible to make a screw in eyelet.

The use of a screw in eyelet is an alternative method of attaching tow points and hang points to your handmade fishing lure.

Through wire construction is strong but there is a problem with it. Once you start applying paint or some kind of clear finish, all your wire loops get painted as well. There are ways around this, for example, you could wax the wires so that the paint doesn't stick to it. But it would make life a lot easier if you could just add screw in eyelets as the very last step in constructing your hand made fishing lure.

I thought I'd test just how strong a screw in eyelet would be, so I marked 16mm on the thread of the eyelet with a black marker, and screwed it in only to that point. I choses 16mm because that was how deep the drill press happened to be set when I drilled my last hole in a smaller lure.

Next I hang four litres of water from it in a milk bottle. Four litres of water weighs four kilograms.

Keep in mind there is no glue on this yet. So my homemade wire eyelet, hand screwed in by only 16mm supported 4kg.

I have no idea how much more it could have lifted before giving way, but with glue I think 10kg or more would be easily achieved. Given the only fishing line I use is rated at 1.8kg and 3.6kg (4 &8 pound), I think a glued in eyelet will afford plenty of strength. In fact, according to this test, I don't even need glue.

The finished lure would look something like this, although the front (top) eyelet would most often be mounted on the bib.

I don't think I'll be using the one piece through wire construction technique, because I'm not convinced the advantages out weigh the disadvantages. I think I'll be using screw in eyelets.

If you don't want to make the eyelets yourself, it's possible to buy them from lots of places online, and even some good, real world, fishing tackle stores.

[Addition - I just finished talking to a reliable forum user that told me he was breaking 100 pound line before pulling any eyelets out. His eyelets were not yet glued.]