First attempt at a wooden net

[jbird]

Well, Most of my free time finds me in the wood shop these days. After seeing some hand crafted wooden nets on the auction block at the National Trout Unlimited banquet last weekend, I knew what my next project must be. After some Youtube education, I went to work on my first net. I was seeing all these DIY steamers and soakers for softening up the thin hoop strips. As I was walking around my pool deck to get some PVC I have laying around, I stop and see my hot tub, Hmmmmm. This will serve as my soaker :) I threw the the strips into the tub at 105* and let em soak for about 4 hours. In the mean time, I set out to build my hoop template and handle.
My first discovery is my template had some pretty tight radiuses and the strips would crack if they were too thick. The curly maple I used does not respond well at all to the surface planer, so I had to rip them to 1/8" thickness and hand sand them (A drum sander would be nice) So my original plan of 3 hoop strips failed and I went with 5, much thinner stips. This worked quite nicely and they bent without much hassle.

At some point during the build, I inadvertantly threw out everything I learned on youtube and started a seatofthepants, head scratching design which resulted in an oversized shoulder section of the handle and an overall size that was a bit large. The hoop size "should" fit a replacement bag that I have yet to obtain.

Anyway, without any futher commentary, heres the results. The hoop is curly maple and black walnut. The handle is African zebrawood with an accent of African Padauk with curly maple and black walnut accents. i think I will just add a small ring bolt on the handle butt. The hoop openning is 7"x 16" and the handle is 12"

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v283/jbird35/JDS_7787_zpsf633b49a.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/jbird35/media/JDS_7787_zpsf633b49a.jpg.html)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v283/jbird35/JDS_7791_zps52d8d49f.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/jbird35/media/JDS_7791_zps52d8d49f.jpg.html)

I dont know if a day will ever come that I will add these to my website. Theres an aweful lot of net builders out there that make mine look like something the cat dragged in. And the time involved in making these is exorbinant. In the mean time, some of my close fishing friends will be recieveng some sweet Christmas gifts ;)

[Darian]

Jay,.... Another great piece of woodwork. Looks like it's going to be functional and very stylish. Too bad it's so labor intensive. :cool:

[Scott V]

Nice job jbird, I made my first one about a year ago. I just need to put a net on it one of these days.

[jbird]

Jay,.... Another great piece of woodwork. Looks like it's going to be functional and very stylish. Too bad it's so labor intensive. :cool:

Thank you Darian. A lot of time was consumed with trying to figure out how to build jigs and so forth. I think I can cut down the time exponentially if I wish to start making these. I am quite OCD about perfecting something that interests me. So I'm sure there will be more :)


Nice job jbird, I made my first one about a year ago. I just need to put a net on it one of these days.

Scott. This place has some good prices on replacement nets and their quite knowledgable. Their site isnt that user friendly tho. When I called them the guy gave me some sku numbers to view some products that I woulda never found. Like ghost bags.

https://www.jannsnetcraft.com/CatalogRequest.aspx?REF=GO11FTC1&gclid=CKXf0vjJ_rkCFdAWMgodtmoAbw

[BillB]

Nice Jay. I used to make them with oak and redwood (odd) or walnut before the prevalence of so many exotics. I later migrated to birch which was the easier to bend and much less brittle than oak. How do you finish shaping the wood? I did it, very dangerously, with a big shaper. Guess I liked the rush! Imagine, shaping a fine net and coming out of it with all you fingers.

[jbird]

How do you finish shaping the wood?

I assume you mean the shape of the handle? I made a template with 1/4" hardboard and adheared it the net handle with double sided tape. Then a used a trim bit on the router table. The bearing on the trim bit rolls along the template while the cutting edge removes the wood.

[Mike O]

I like the MeasureNet replacement bags. They zip on and zip off.

http://m.themeasurenet.com/Measure-Nets.html