DIY options for making a sensitive float

A DIY float can be used in different fishing conditions. Depending on the area of ​​use, the appropriate materials should be selected.

• Fishing in the coastal zone is possible with the lightest models weighing 0.2-0.8 g. Due to its low weight, it is possible to hunt for such fish species as roach, rudd and crucian carp.
• For fishing on the current, a medium-weight float (0.8-2.5 g) is required. Equipment with such a signaling device can easily be thrown at 20-30 m, where such large fish as bream, ide, chub live.
• A heavy float weighing from 3 to 10 g allows to perform ultra-long casting of equipment. Such models have a voluminous body, and flight characteristics reach 50 m. The antenna will be clearly visible from afar due to its large size. Such large representatives of ichthyofauna as carp and silver carp will be interested in the bait.

If earlier anglers were limited in materials, today the choice is quite large. Some of the materials are suitable for making the body, while others are best used as an antenna.

1. You can form a floating body using:

• foam;
• wine or brandy corks;
• medical syringe;
• balsa;
• wood.

1. The following may be suitable for the role of an antenna:

• waterfowl feather (from geese or ducks);
• cane;
• plastic tube.

To create a bite alarm, you may need various household materials:

• waterproof glue will help hold the individual elements together;
• wire 0.5-1.0 mm thick is needed to make rings and loops;
• acrylic paints will give the float personality and good visibility;
• toothpicks will help process the body of the float.

For comfortable and fast work, you should have some tools on hand.

There is no video topic for this article.

• Making precise and even holes is easiest with an electric drill and a set of drills. In some cases it is more convenient to work with an awl.
• A chisel and a sharp knife will allow you to remove excess pieces of material when creating a fishing masterpiece.
• Using a file or emery paper, you can give the float precise shapes and perfect smoothness.
• The easiest way to hold the workpiece or tool is in a vice.
• A ruler or vernier caliper will help to control the accuracy of manufacturing.

Technology for making a float from a wine cork or foam

To make a float with an increased load capacity, you need to shape the body. It can be in the form of a ball, an olive or a drop.

Minimal rework is needed when making a wine cork float. It has a cylindrical body, which remains to be slightly modified and polished.

But when using the popular foam, it is necessary to cut a suitable shape from a square or rectangular blank. On initial stage it is better to use a sharp clerical knife to give the future float a body as close as possible to the ideal shape. The length of the workpiece can be 50-70 mm long and 10-20 mm thick.

Photo 1. Foam body, antenna and handle bar.

Photo 2. We glue the antenna and the rod into the body.

1. A carabiner with a swivel or a wire loop is attached to the bottom of the antenna. It remains to decorate the body and antenna with paint or nail polish.

Photo 3. Cut the tube of the rod. got a sliding float.

Photo 4. Coloring the product.

Every lover fishing there are several goose floats in the box. They often help out when the fish bites are careful and unobtrusive. Before making a goose feather float, you should properly prepare the material.

1. To collect feathers, it is better to go to a pond that geese or ducks have chosen. You can take 5-10 feathers with you, different in color and length. Do not start any processing on the shore. It's best to do everything at home.
2. Using a clerical knife, you need to cut off the fluff from both sides.

1. Leftover fluff can be removed with fire. To do this, it is easier to use a lighter and walk along the body with a flame several times. The fire will also help straighten the curved feather.
2. Further, it is necessary to coat the attachment points of the villi with colorless varnish in order to seal microscopic holes and cracks.
3. The upper part of the feather is colored red or orange.
4. Knowing how to make a feather float, it is important to securely attach it to the line. To do this, two cambric from a tube from a dropper is placed on the pen. Alternatively, a thin wire loop can be made at the bottom of the float.
5. It is quite easy to increase the weight and capacity of a goose float. It is necessary to make a body from foam, balsa or cork. Then measure the thickness of the feather with a caliper and make a through hole with a drill. Its diameter should be 0.1-1.0 mm thinner than the thickness of the pen. The antenna is inserted inside and fixed with glue.

Read also: They sharpen all their teeth on the poor gudgeon, catching a predator with a feeder

For ultra-long casting rigs, you can create a bobber with a weight.

1. An antenna can be made from two plastic tubes. A tube with a thickness of 1.5 mm should be installed on top, a plastic product with a diameter of 3 mm is suitable for the lower part. Alternatively, bamboo or reed can be used.
2. The body is made of polystyrene foam. The height of the body is 40-70 mm, the diameter at the top is 15 mm, at the bottom point it tapers to 10 mm.
3. A hole is made in the lower part of the body with a depth of 4-6 mm and a thickness of 2.5 mm. A lead cut is mounted in the hole, which is fixed with glue. It can be cast to the appropriate thickness by first installing a wire loop.
4. A wire ring for fishing line is attached to the upper part of the body.
5. The assembly of the antenna to the body is done with waterproof glue. The final step is to paint the float.

A fan of float fishing should have a rich set of bite alarms. Some floats are convenient for short-fishing in calm weather. Other models will help you deliver the bait a long distance, allowing you to catch trophy fish.

DIY float: how to make a sensitive tackle

You can buy a new float, or you can make it yourself. The method of fishing and what kind of fish you are going to fish will be decisive in choosing the material and shape of the float being made.

Materials and tools for making floats

Most often, folk craftsmen for making floats with their own hands use available materials:

You will also need tools and additional materials: a vice, a knife, a drill with a small drill, sandpaper, glue, varnish of different colors, a degreaser.

Such a float is highly sensitive. Basically it is made in the form of a ball with a diameter of 5-7mm, olives or drops.

1. First, square blanks of the required size are cut with a knife or hacksaw from a single piece.
2. Then, with a clerical knife or using a drill with a special nozzle, they give the float the desired shape and sand it with sandpaper.
3. Having well cleaned of dust, they are painted with tempera or gouache and dried.
4. Cover with varnish and leave to dry.
5. A through longitudinal hole is drilled in the center, into which a feather or wood core is inserted with a length of up to 7 cm and a thickness of 1 mm to 1.5 mm.
6. You can glue a part of a thin feather only into the upper part of the float, and at the bottom, make a loop for a fishing line from a thin wire or an eyelet from a hook.

It is shipped mainly with one sinker so that only part of the rod is visible. It reacts well even to careful bites of fish, both from the bottom and on weight. It is advisable to mount a tackle with a thin fishing line up to 1.6 mm to such a float.

The manufacturing principle is similar to the previous one. But it is necessary to take into account the porosity of the material and the fact that it becomes heavier when saturated with water. Therefore, before work, it is advisable to seal all large holes in the workpiece for the floats with waterproof putty or finely crushed cork mixed with glue, which dries quickly.

Then sand, degrease and cover with oil paint. Insert a rod with a loop into the longitudinal hole, at the end of which there is an eyelet from a large hook (No. 9-10). It turns out an excellent float on a hinge, which is fixed with a piece of tube put on a fishing line.

It is shipped with at least two weights up to half of the rod of the upper part of the float.

An irreplaceable float for catching very cautious fish, it works great on a strong wave. Very easy to manufacture.

1. The only operation that requires care is to remove the awn from the pen. You must shoot without haste so as not to damage the integrity of the pen.
2. Then the thinner lower part is cut obliquely and bent in a loop.
3. A ring made of thin wire and a tongue are inserted from below, tied with a thin thread to the rod, covered with colorless varnish.
4. Half of the float or its upper part is painted. Note that very bright colors will deter fish.

Extremely sensitive and lightweight cylindrical float. Lays down silently on the water. The reed must be completely dry and free from damage. The strength of the material is checked by squeezing between the fingers.

1. Cut the reed with a clerical knife into pieces corresponding to the length of the float.
2. Slices can be slightly sharpened with a pencil sharpener.
3. Glue a wooden twig on top, a wire loop from below.
4. Wrap the thread to the thread both top and bottom. Align and varnish thoroughly.
5. Pay attention to centering and to ensure that the cuts and joints are well varnished.
6. Paint the upper part in the desired color.

All homemade foam floats and corks can be made for both short and long casting, varying the height of the antenna and making the bottom of the float itself heavier with a built-in lead weight.

With a huge assortment of floats in stores, experienced fishermen still make them on their own. And surprisingly, they will be the most catchy and the most beloved, because they are made with a soul.

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We are sure that your homemade float will not miss a bite and will bring you a rich catch! We recommend reading the article on float loading.

DIY winter float - making and painting

To make winter floats with your own hands, you do not need special skills and complex tools. Anyone can cope with this. A self-made float is adjusted to the required dimensions and carrying capacity directly during the manufacturing process. In this article, we will consider the features of the independent manufacture of floats for a winter fishing rod of various designs.

In winter fishing with a line, a float is not just a bite alarm, but essential element snap. In addition to fixing attempts on the bait, a properly configured installation takes away part of the weight of the bait during the bite on the rise, which allows you to successfully hook the most cautious fish. Read more about float equipment in winter. There are not as many design options for winter alarms as for open water fishing. However, the nuances of the rig are just as important. Winter tackle requires finely tuned rigging, and the float is the most important element.

If the installation with hooks and straps can be easily adjusted to any load capacity by changing the weight of the used pellets, then difficulties may arise with the jig. The fisherman may simply not have a jig and a float corresponding to the carrying capacity and weight. Too heavy a jig on a small piece of foam will work on active fish. In the wilderness, however, such a tackle will most likely not work due to the roughness of the rig. This is expressed in the shaking of the float when biting (that is, the fish, in principle, manifests itself) and the absence of a successful hooking - the bream or crucian simply immediately spits out the bait, feeling the weight of the jig or the pressure of the fishing line with a padding on the lower lip. The overall buoyancy of the system should be slightly negative, so that the jig will slowly sink the rig, and not drag it to the bottom like a stone. Then, when biting on the rise, the floating foam will take the weight of the jig on itself, and the fish will not feel a foreign object in its mouth.

If there is no suitable float for a specific jig, then you can take a slightly larger one (floats with a load) and grind it with a file (sandpaper) until the entire installation receives a slight negative buoyancy (begins to submerge). It is for such a case that it is more convenient to make a homemade version, having properly ground it before painting (so as not to rip off the already painted store one). Consider how to make a winter float with your own hands.

The design is simple - the body is made of foam or wood with a hole in the middle or an eyelet (pin) for fastening through a cambric. The simplest option is a do-it-yourself winter float made of foam. Polyfoam is easy to process, now there is a lot of it around, so it makes no sense to complicate your work using wood.

A winter float with your own hands can be made in any shape - spherical, droplet, barrel, tablet. It is much more important then to grind it to the required carrying capacity. The fastening is made non-removable, through a hole in the body with a pin, or removable - with a cambric on the leg. The work will require the simplest tools and materials:

• Polyfoam - solid, low porosity.
• Pin material - plastic sticks, toothpicks, etc.
• Cambric, thin steel (copper) wire for eyelets - when making a hinge.
• Waterproof adhesive, non corrosive foam
• Acrylic paints, nail polish for coloring
• Knife, scissors, files, files, sandpaper, thin drill, thick needle.

A blank is cut from the foam with a knife, depending on the desired size of the future product. The minimum is 6-8 mm thick and up to 1 cm long. Next, the workpiece is turned to a round shape. A hole of the required diameter is drilled in the workpiece with a heated needle or drill. Mounting options:

1. Lower antenna for cambric
2. Through hole for non-removable through-body attachment.
3. Swivel loop and pin with tube.

The lower antenna or wire is fixed tightly in the body with the help of a moment or superglue. Winter alarms do not need to be securely fastened as in summer - there are no long casts. If a longitudinal cut is made in the cambric, we get a completely removable mounting option.

A hollow plastic float can be glued from any tubes, handles and other similar materials. However, this design has a significant drawback - the lack of the ability to grind to fit a specific jig.

Composites are designed for sensitive tuning of the tackle when fishing at sufficient depths for bream, roach, crucian carp. Their total carrying capacity is greater, and when biting uphill, first only the upper signal part pops up. The large body remains underwater and continues to compensate for the weight of the bait. The composer is assembled from foam bodies of various shapes, from bottom to top, from large to small. The workpieces are cut from the foam and the loop is fastened to the loop with wire hinges on the glue. Rigid polyurethane foam can be used instead of foam. Such a composite float for winter fishing with your own hands is no worse than a store one.

The most important part of the manufacturing process is the load setting. To do this, the workpiece is attached to a piece of fishing line, the jig for which the float is made is tied. Experiments can be carried out in a three-liter jar or bucket of water. Initially, such an assembly should have positive buoyancy. Next, the foam is grinded with a file or sandpaper until the workpiece slowly sinks under this load. This float setting for winter fishing rods- advantage over ready-made store options... The result is a customized bundle.

This part of the work is optional, but desirable. With the proper approach, the result will be a float for winter fishing, no different from store products, but already selected and tuned for a specific weight of the rig. For painting, you can use acrylic paints, varnishes that do not corrode foam. It is better to prime porous materials before painting so that the paint does not absorb into the pores.

Painted homemade ice fishing floats are more durable and look prettier. The main task of painting is not artistic, but purely functional. The bright striped signal is simply better visible in a dark hole, especially when fishing at night. For even better visibility, the foam can be painted with a luminous phosphoric varnish.

How to make a float with your own hands - options for homemade floats

Often, fishermen prefer to make their own floats rather than buying these fishing tackle in stores.

And this is not surprising at all, since the use of homemade floats is beneficial for two simple reasons:

You save personal money; Based on personal fishing considerations and needs, you can get at your disposal a float of almost any shape, color, design. Further, we will talk about the manufacture of several types of floats.

In the course of work, you may need some tools and a number of different materials.

• A piece of styrofoam;
• Goose feather;
• Bottle stopper;
• Plastic tube;
• Wire of different cross-sections.

Also grab some epoxy glue, a few pieces of sandpaper, and quality, waterproof paints.

Foam floats are characterized by high level sensitivity. The most common are homemade ball-shaped models, drop-shaped floats or olives.

To begin with, small square or rectangular blanks are cut from a piece of foam. Next, using a sharp clerical knife, the float is given the desired shape and cleaned with sandpaper. Instead of a knife, you can also use a drill with an appropriate attachment.

You can use a hook eyelet instead of a wire. Most often, one sinker is used in the tackle, when using which only part of the float rod is visible to the fisherman. Foam floats are quite sensitive, so they will notify the fisherman even about weak bites. For effective work the float requires a line with a thickness of up to 0.16 mm.

From below we insert a ring of wire and a tongue, we attach it to the rod and cover with varnish. Top part dyes as needed in the desired color.

Such a float is fixed using a tube that is put on the fishing line. It is shipped with 2-3 weights up to about half of the rod of the upper part of the float body.

In the summer, they gave me a piece of hard foam from an old life jacket. Well, since I lose up to a dozen floats in the summer, I decided try to make them yourself. I don't go fishing in winter, there is a lot of time.

We saw it into pieces. We choose the size at our discretion, but since I am satisfied with the small ones, I cut this piece into 4 parts.

In the market I bought bamboo skewers for barbecue, they cost a penny, and I picked up a drill of such a diameter that the skewer would fit closely into the hole that we drill in the workpiece.

Now we give the approximate shape of a homemade float with a clerical knife.

We insert the skewers into the blanks.

Place a drop of Chinese super glue between the skewer and the foam. This is done so that when we grind the foam, it does not scroll.

The glue dries in a moment, and after 5-10 minutes you can already grind it. Here I had to call my wife for help to hold the drill and regulate the speed. There is a simple way out of this situation: hold the drill in a vise, and adjust the speed with the speed control pedal from the sewing machine. But this requires a drill without electronic speed control, otherwise it does not work, the drill immediately takes more than half the revolutions. You can also adapt the dimmer to your chandelier.

Next, we attach our float to the drill so as not to wrinkle the skewer. Squeeze a little hand and that's it - it will hold on.
Yes, I forgot to write that we choose the skewers as evenly as possible! But they will still beat, so you need to slightly hold the antenna with your left hand.

Since we did the initial processing with a knife, the float will be sausage. To avoid this, you need to take something hard and sandpaper it. A flat file came across my arm, so I took it. The lower end of the file must be resting against the table or, like mine, against the cutting board.

Unscrew the drill to medium speed and smoothly bring the file with sandpaper to the float. We start with coarse sandpaper, remove all beats and gradually give the shape of the future float.

When the beats are removed, you can remove the file, and then work due to the stiffness of the sandpaper, moving to a smaller one.

This is what happens when you are in a hurry. I pressed the file a little harder - and the keel broke!

Before finishing the processing, we change the direction of rotation of the drill and lightly sand it with very fine sandpaper. This is done so that the foam fibers, which are licked as the drill rotates, are worn away and the pores open.

Now we dilute the PVA glue to the state of milk and coat the foam with a brush. Dry. Now our homemade float, made by hand, has become like a hedgehog! All the lint has risen and hardened from the glue. We again clamp the float into the drill and with a sandpaper, preferably with a new zero, we remove these villi.

Then pour some baby powder into a plate and pour it into a jar of ordinary emulsion. We dilute it with water until it becomes cream. The emulsion should be the simplest one, which is not advisable to wash and wipe.

Now we rub the powder into the foam.

We dip it into an emulsion.

Sprinkle a little more powder.

We begin to rub this gruel into the float. Well, the main thing here is not to overdo it with the powder, otherwise everything will quickly thicken and smear badly. Here you need to watch how the gruel falls on the foam. It is advisable to achieve fewer open pores the first time.

Align the slurry evenly over the float, wait until the slurry starts to keep the pores closed (this is about 30-40 seconds), and again dip the float into the emulsion. I'll tell you right away, for the future: there should be no air bubbles (foam) in the can, as they will stick to the float.

Raise the float slowly! So that, due to surface tension, the excess emulsion, and then further and the varnish, flows into the jar immediately, and does not form drips when drying the float.

Then we dry again. The fibers from the foam may reappear, remove them as in the last time. Again we lower and take out the float into the emulsion and see how many unsealed pores are left. If they are, and they will be 100%, then rub in the powder and repeat everything. And so three times, until you achieve the fact that when the float was lifted from the emulsion, there was not a single open pore on it.
All this is dried each time until completely dry.

After drying, the surface should be smooth, without pores and unevenness. And now we take a waterproof and super-white emulsion. We dilute with water just like cream, and without any powder, we simply dip and slowly pull out our float. Dry. We dip again and dry again. After drying with a brush, paint the antenna with this super-white paint.

Well, it remains to paint our homemade floats with our own hands. Yes, I forgot to write that I dry floats with clothespins. I hang it by the keel, then by the antenna. There are many different dyes now, acrylics are needed, which are diluted with water.

You can talk a lot about the color of the floats. There are no questions with floats that are not afraid of nitro paints, and this is mainly made of wood. Everything is simple there - I sanded it thoroughly with fine sandpaper, dipped it immediately into nitro lacquer (it will redraw and fill in all the irregularities and pores), and then paint it with any dyes.

It is best to use car enamels, nitro paints, and are also sold in stores for those who like to collect various models of very bright nitro paints in small bottles. But all this requires costs, and you will not buy several multi-colored cans of expensive car enamels to use a few grams from each can. The main thing here is to carve the body of the float out of the wood, which is quite problematic with the help of a drill.

Well, this is all reasoning, but we will proceed from what we have available. Now our homemade float (foam) is also protected and can be painted with nitro paints. But I will tell you how I did and about my mistakes, which manifested themselves after a while.
We take a jar and pour super-white waterproof enamel into it (it was above in the photo) and add the dye to the shade we need. Do not forget to dilute everything with water. We will paint the bottom of the float with this composition.

The color itself plays a role here. If you fish at depth, then you don't have to bother and paint in any beautiful one. But if in shallow water, then it is advisable to choose the color of some driftwood, a leaf that has fallen into the water, etc. You yourself know that large fish very careful and beware of getting close to bright objects.

We immerse the float in our paint and slowly raise it. The paint should run smoothly and evenly. I raise it for about 10-15 seconds so that the extra glass immediately and there are no smudges later.

Of course we dry. It is enough to dip once.
Next, we make the next color in another jar. It needs very little, and you can apply it directly with a brush, but 2 times. The brush should be very soft, because then we will apply varnish to it. I bought several of these, they are about 17 rubles. Do not forget to rinse the brush well immediately. Yes, I just added a little PVA glue to the yellow dye, because if you add dye to the enamel, the color becomes pale.

From the keel of the float with a knife, we clean off all our previously applied layers of putty and paint to the very skewer. I thought for a long time what to paint further. I tried to breed all sorts of colors and, with a slow rotation of the drill, draw rings with the thinnest brush, but since the skewers are still crooked and beat a little, the width of the lines was different with the brush, and I decided to continue painting with markers.

The drill works at low speeds, we bring the marker, the ring is ready. First we draw light, and then dark tones. We are waiting for the marker to dry.

Well, now comes the crucial moment. We will cover our float with colorless nitro varnish for wood. The point is that the varnish dissolves the marker! Therefore, we do this: at the most almost slow speed, turn on the drill, dip the brush into the varnish and literally just touch our coloring. In one motion, for one second, cover the blue rings and the nearby black ones with a thin layer of varnish.

We rinse the brush from the remains of the marker, which have stained the bristles, right in the jar with varnish. Again we dip in varnish and with the same quick movement cover the bottom of the float, and then the black rings on the antenna. We dry very well. And we do this 2 times. For the third time, you can already cover the body of the float with a brush, but it is necessary that there is not too little varnish on the brush. I spent a little, dunked, then again ...

The third time, you can go through the whole antenna, almost to the very tip. If only you could then take the float and not get your hands dirty. Then paint the very tip with a brush last.

Have a little snack

Now you can apply two finishing coats of varnish by dipping. Only, of course, after each layer it dried for 12 hours, and after the second layer - a couple of days. We lower the float into a jar of varnish so that the varnish covers the first black ring, and gradually raise it - 10-15 seconds. Hang to dry in the same vertical position.

Then we cover the antenna with varnish with a brush. That's all!
This applies to those who attach the float to the nipple from the bicycle. But, since I use hand-made sliding floats, we continue further.
We buy a 2 kW nichrome spiral in a store and unwind it on a reel from an old fishing line. We carefully cut off the tip of the keel and clean off the varnish to the very skewer.

Next, we are looking for something like a mandrel for winding a spiral from the purchased nichrome. It should literally be slightly thinner than the keel of the float. We clamp the mandrel into the drill, fix the beginning of the wire and wind the spiral onto the mandrel. Then we bend a couple of turns of our spiral with a knife, insert the tip of the round-nose pliers into the resulting ring and bend the ring so that the beginning of the wire is almost hidden under the main spiral. The photo is clearly visible.

This is so that the line or carabiner does not cling to the beginning of the loop. You can, of course, pick up a ready-made spring from oil seals for cars, they are stronger, but you need to spin around the car service and rummage through the trash.

It remains to paint over and varnish. That's the whole technology for making a float with your own hands. It turned out a little dreary, but I think that everything is clear.

Well, now about what you shouldn't have done ...
It turns out that the varnish discolours the marker! After two months after making the floats, the blue color turned completely pale, and the black turned pale too! But the yellow one, which was bred on PVA glue, remained bright, and the body of the float itself did not turn pale! The conclusion suggests itself: it was necessary to dilute the paint with PVA glue or waterproof enamel! But then I would have to apply with a brush.
I remind you once again that tests of homemade floats in the field have not yet been carried out, and how they will show themselves, we will find out only in the spring. If I could help someone, or it was just interesting, I will be glad.

Here's the bottom line: