How to make your own Pike / Marker Floats

[Carpoholic]

Here is a step-by-step guide of how to make your own Pike / Marker Floats.
There is also a guide to making the Vein/flight.




1. The Equipment

2. Shapeing the float with the sharp knife

3. Shapeing the float #2

4. Sanding the float

5. Shaped / sanded and ready for painting

6. Drilling hole for the swivel.

7. Inserting & glueing in the swivel.

8. Painting on the white undercoat.

9. Sanding the first white coat.

10. Painting on the flouro coat.

[KG?]

Snyggt! Enkel och bra beskrivning.

[Carpoholic]

11. The painted flouro coating.

12. Painting the base of the float.

13. The equipment for making the vein/flight.

14. The vein/flight & stem.

15. Assembleing the vein/flight.

16. Assembleing the vein/flight. 2

17. The vein/flight ready to be mounted on to the float.

18. The vein/flight ready to be mounted on to the float. 2

19. The vein/flight mounted on to the float.

20. The finished vein/flight mounted & ready to be painted.

[Kjelle Lundberg]

Tack för en kanon guide,rak och lätt begriplig.

[KG?]

What is the vein/flight made of?

[Carpoholic]

What is the vein/flight made of?

Its made from the lid of a plastic bucket.
But it can be made from anythig plastic providing it is the right thickness.

[etuna_alex]

bra artikel =) mycket intressant!

[Carpoholic]

bra artikel =) mycket intressant!

Thanks

Theres not much to do on these long cold winter nights, is there?

[Carpoholic]

Here is the detailed guide.

How To Make Your Own PIKE/MARKER FLOATS

It is very easy to make your own Pike/Marker Floats, it’s also much cheaper than buying them and much more fun to make them yourself.
I have been making my own Floats for over 20 years now and I began when I was 13 or 14 years old. I have designed my own floats and tested them. Some work great, some not so good and a few have been useless.
I am always looking out for new materials to use and I have stumbled across some great materials for making floats.
But by far the best material I have used for floats; especially Pike/Marker Floats is Balsa Wood.
It will stand quite a good beating and it is easy to shape when making the floats.
I have made floats from Polystyrene, Cork, Quills (birds feathers), Reeds, Plastic tubes, Drinking Straws, Aluminium and of course Balsa Wood.

Equipment
This is a list of equipment needed to make a Pike/Marker float.

1. Balsa Wood.
2. Paint – Black, White & Flouro Orange.
3. Varnish.
4. Paint Brushes.
5. Sharp Knife.
6. Sandpaper – Course & Smooth.
7. Swivels.
8. Superglue.
9. Pliers.
10. Drill bits.
11. Ruler or tape measure

Materials to make the vein
This is a list of equipment needed to make a vein

1. Balsa wood 6mm x 6mm.
2. Hacksaw Blade.
3. A sheet of plastic 1mm thick.
4. Sharp Knife.
5. Sandpaper.
6. A Pencil.
7. Drill bits.
8. Superglue.
9. Ruler or tape measure
10. Paint – Black, White & Flouro Orange.
11. Varnish.

How to make the float

Step 1.
Cut a length of Balsa Wood, for example 15 cm x 2.5cm x 2.5cm.
(If you can find Balsa Wood in Sweden that is already round like a cigar shape, then that’s great. I have been looking everywhere and can only find it in square pieces measuring 100cm x 2.5cm x 2.5cm.)
Then take the sharp knife and whittle it until it becomes round.
This is easier than it sounds because the balsa is really soft.
Don’t worry about getting it perfectly round with the knife.


Step 2.
Then take a course piece of sandpaper and sand it to the exact shape that you want the float to be.
This is also quite easy due to the softness of the wood.
Once it’s the shape you want, smooth it off with the fine sandpaper.

Step 3.
When the balsa is ready, take the swivel & pliers and push the swivel into the bottom end of the float until there is just one eye of the swivel sticking out of the wood (this is the eye you would hold with the pliers).
Then pull the swivel out of the float again and fill the hole with super glue and push the swivel back in again.
Try not to get glue in the swivel or it will prevent the eye from rotating.
Leave the glue to dry for a few minutes

Step 4.
The float is now ready for painting but before painting it wipe off any dust from the float.
Take the White paint and paint the top end as this is going to be the visible end that sticks up out of the water. Once you have painted it let it dry.
Then lightly rub it down with the smooth sandpaper removing any rough parts.
Don’t rub too hard, as you will remove the paint as well.
Once this is done give it a quick wipe and another coat of white paint. Then let it dry again.
Once it’s completely dry, give it another rub with the smooth sandpaper and then wipe the dust off with a cloth.

Step 5.
Once the white undercoat is dry, take your “Fluorescent Paint” (Red, Orange or Yellow) and paint over the white end.
Note: You must put an undercoat of white paint on before the Fluorescent paint or else the Fluorescent paint will not be Fluorescent.
Once again when it is dry sand it down and give it another coat of paint.
Let it dry completely before the next step.

Step 6.
When it’s dry, its time to paint the bottom end (the end that will be submerged in the water).
You do not have to paint this end if you don’t want to; it’s obviously your choice.
If you do paint it, it doesn’t necessarily have to be black.
I usually paint mine either Black, Dark Brown or Dark Green. But I have made some and left the wood showing through and just varnished it (see pics)
Once you have given it a couple of coats let dry completely before the next step.

Step 7.
When the paint is dry give the whole of the float a coat of varnish and hang it up to dry. Once again be careful not to get varnish in the swivel or it won’t rotate.
You can always give it 2 coats of varnish if you wish.
You can use boat varnish, which is very tough and really protects the paint, or an aerosol varnish from a hobby shop will do. But if you use this, spray the float outside, as the fumes from this kind of varnish are really strong.






How to make the vein

If you are really feeling adventurous you could add a visible flight to your Balsa Marker float.
Not only does this increase the visibility of the float but also assists when casting, as the float will fly straight like an arrow. This makes the cast more accurate and increases the casting distance.
You can use the stems & flights from a normal set of darts and paint them yourself or you can make your own from a piece of balsa wood for the stem and cut the flight arrows out of an 5 litre plastic “saft dunk”.

Firstly, measure and draw your vein on the plastic and cut it out using a sharp knife. When you have cut out one of the veins, use this one as a template and draw a line round it. Then cut your second one out of the plastic.
You should have 2 halves of the vein now that are both the same size.
Now you need to cut out the 2 slots in the veins so they can be fitted together in a cross shape.
To cut the slots, measure half way from the bottom of the vein to the middle on one of them, and do the same on the other but measure from the top to the middle.
Then carefully cut the slots out of the vein.
To make the stem of the vein, take the 6mm x 6mm piece of balsa wood and cut a cross down the centre. This should be slightly smaller than the length of the vein. When you have done this you can shape the stem so it becomes round. This is best done with just sandpaper and not a knife.
You can now cut the stem to the length you require remembering to leave an extra 20mm so you can insert this into the float.
To insert the stem into the float reduce the thickness of the stem by about 1mm with a sharp knife and sandpaper. Then drill a hole in the top of the float the same size as the stem.
Then insert the stem and glue it in. Once you have got it right you can glue the vein into the stem as well.
Lightly sand the plastic vein so it leaves a rough surface for the paint to stick to.
Then when the glue is dry you can paint it as you have the top of the float.



Hints & Tips

1. Other materials that can be used to make marker floats are Aluminium cigar tubes. Just fill the tube with polystyrene (frigolite) for extra buoyancy.
Seal the tube by superglueing the cap on.
Before you do this, you will need to attach a swivel into the cap. Do this by piercing a small hole in the cap and pushing one eye of the swivel through.
Then thread a small piece of wire through the eye inside the cap and splay it out so it prevents the swivel from coming out again.
Then use very fine sandpaper to rub down the tube forming a slightly rough surface. This helps the paint to stick to the surface of the tube.
If you don’t sand it the paint will flake off quite quickly.
Then just paint & varnish it as you would with the Balsa float.

2. Another alternative is to use the plastic tubes that vitamin tablets are sold in. Just make them as the cigar tube version mentioned above.

3. I have been asked on numerous occasions where I buy the equipment & materials from to make the floats, so here is where I get mine:
For the balsa wood the best places are Hobby shops (Pandoro hobby, Hobbex) and model shops (where they sell the things for making model cars and aeroplanes etc).
For the paints and varnish, again try the hobby, art and model shops. You can also buy flouro paints at Biltema, K-Rauta and some other major stores.
For the rest of the equipment, Knife, sandpaper, drill bits; look no further than Rusta, Överskottsbolaget, Claes Ohlson, GöFab etc.



Chris Thornhill
chris@screamingdelkims.se
www.screamingdelkims.se

[Discharged]

I´ve made a few floats of my own and here are some things I like to do on my floats that you might find useful

I usually add a few grams of led in drilled holes in the bottom, on each side of the swivel (I presume that swivel = lekande?)

I give up in trying to write this in english now

Sen brukar jag fästa lekandet med lite ståltråd som man böjt som en hårnål, för om flötet ligger i vegetation så är det lätt hänt att flötet fastnar och om man har fisk på kroken så måste man kunna rycka loss flötet snabbt... (flötet kommer man alltså att förlora)

Till sist skulle inte jag använda balsaträ till den lilla pinnen som håller fast "dart-delen" bättre med en blompinne, de tål mer stryk.