Travis

I don't think I have come across a variety pack. Just individual styles/baits. Jann's ends up being around 2.50 a blank if you get at least 10. So could get an assortment of cranks and top waters that way. Always plastic stuff always and the usual sources for those blanks. You might be able to work out a deal with an individual depending on what you are wanting to spend an how much work.

I like the Jacquard pearls but find them more effective dry brushing and blending them than spraying mixed in a clear. I used Createx Transparent base 4004 if spraying. So the blue, lavender on the sides and much of the silver are dry brush/rubbed in. Moving onto the gills/operculum the bronze, peach, rose and silver are applied in the same fashion. Depending on the angle the colors change drastically.

What air brush do you have? You have clog somewhere especially if water won't pass. You will need to disassemble and clean.

Just seal the entire bead as you need to seal the interior of walls of hole anyway. Personally I would likely just chuck all the beads in a small jar of dewaxed shellac and let sit for 15 to 30 minutes then remove and let dry. Just clean out the hole with the correct drill bit and lightly sand the bead and should be good to go. If only a few beads likely just saturate the line hole and bead with superglue a few times over.

I would clear it as is. Any scale you add at this point will have to be a very light mist of a pearl or you will kill your colors. Lay you base color first next time then mesh. Then paint your bait remove mesh and do the stripes and gill detail.

I am partial to basswood as cheap and readily available and is what most of my masters have been carved from. "Detail" is dependent on the person. Basswood can get fuzzy with fine detail but can be burned off. I don't do much detail on lures typically so basswood works well for my needs. Won't have issue with grain and there is a reason why basswood is used frequently by carvers. Tupelo is nice also but haven't used much of it. Paulowina I tried seamed to splinter easily. Aspen or pine could be fine also. Maple holds detail well and crisp but more difficult to carve and work with.

Don't think it makes much of a difference to be honest. The industry can no longer rely on baby boomers so the need to step into modern day shopping, advertising, and marketing is needed. With social media today plenty of individuals make it with that as the only form of advertising and marketing. You just need to have the right personality. I am surprised they continue ICAST to be honest as typically cost associated with the events aren't recouped by many of the participants.

I think you have to definitely define bone color. As a bass angler I typically think of colors in regards to historical and not some modern day take on things. So many things get twisted and defined for various reasons whether it is a color, hunting actions, etc... I think of the late 80's (?) when bone started to "pop" up because of the Rebel Pop R dominance (again) in the bass fishing scene. Modified Pop R's were dominating many of the tourneys on the TVA lakes. Bone was the color that guys started to emulate because paint and topcoats flaked off the plastic baits and exposed the raw material. The creamy off white plastic color hidden under the paint was the goal. I would buy dozens of baits and scrape/sand finish off those baits right out of the package while sitting in my dorm room and manage to get rid of them every few weeks at the boat ramps to make a buck or two. White is of course the base color. Yes you can mix the primary colors together (above) to get various shades of brown or you can mix a primary and its complimentary color or you can add "brown" With all the colors of paints available you can get very close to bone off the shelf and then just add to shift the hue. Historically most used white with a few drops of an opaque yellow then adjusted with translucent brown to get the color dialed in.

Ideally it should be. It isn't too difficult to do if you take the proper steps. A top down profile drawn on card stock, recipe card, etc.. can be used as a template and trace the design on each crank. I then typically go the band saw and cut to save time. For some baits this isn't needed and sharp knife makes short work of it and easy enough to keep even if you draw a center line on the bait.

How much are you wanting to get? If only needing enough for a dozen cranks or so then Menards, Micheal's, and Hobby Lobby always have bass wood. Have to use 40 and 50% coupons as the last two are expensive typically. Menards is priced cheaper but still high but typically cheaper than buying small amounts with shipping online. If you have local mill should be able to get basswood the cheapest that way. I have ordered from various mills online and had stuff shipped for reasonable. Usually stay with Northern states mills as better quality local wood. In my area air dried basswood runs around $1.50 - 2.00 a bd/ft.

Not that hard or complicated to be honest. Cheaper to buy one but then again for many it would be cheaper to just buy lures than make them.

Flaws...to me would be when the lure doesn't function/isn't fish able or if you are trying to make a dozen of the same bait and end up with actions/depth all over the place. More importantly running into the issue like you have is how you become a good at making baits. Shallow cranks are very forgiving in regards to building compared to trying to make a deep diving crank. All three of your baits run true and for me that is the most important part as they can fished. The chartreuse line tie above is one that I naturally gravitate towards. Runs deeper, nose down, and tighter action and I always like to crank boulders/rocks but would not have any problems throwing the other two shallow along lay downs this summer. I would be happy with all three.

Etex is fine... I like KBS better but nothing wrong with Etex and weight of the top coat not the issue based on your explanation and video. Based on you pictures you have a few variables going on but the pictures may be deceiving. The lure bodies and lips don't appear to be symmetrical and the lips placement/extension are different. If the sides are not symmetrical you start to change how the water passes and well think plane wing and function. The bait you are having issues with: If you were to draw and line using the hook hangers to bisect the lure it would appear the one side of the body falls more to one side and additionally the bill is also installed slightly in that direction as more lip extends to that side. Personally I would just take some sandpaper and a sharp blade to the pool and take a little off the lip on the front/side make a few casts and slowly work towards getting it moving right. Suspend strips (or golf head tape) are good to have in your testing kit also.

Prior to me pouring no I would not have bought a mixed pack. Several companies would do it from time to time or offer sample packs. To me it seams gimmicky and is targeted towards a very specific demographic. New getting into fishing. I wouldn't think about hitting the water without bags of the same color if fishing soft plastics.

I always wiped it off but find Johnson's paste wax or Mann's Ez Release easier to deal with. I mix thinner typically more like cake or pancake batter. I wan't it to run as it fills in detail better. I don't use and injector very often but mine doesn't lock, just take care and all good.

https://www.lurepartsonline.com/ The people entering are typically customers of the above, who own/operate the site. It is something fun they do for customers or potential customers just like keeping this site up and going. TU real issue if you are concerned with lack of activity, members, etc.. is that it did not change with the times as some members were very keen on this not becoming a video and picture laden site as they didn't wan't some sort of "social media site". Any guesses where most new lure makers get their information, what groups they join, you tube channels, etc... Additionally guys that run those can make a dollar or two and pick up sponsors and free gear so joining and doing stuff on TU not in their best interest typically unless it brings in enough viewers to their sites.

As pointed out can brush on the acetone if needed around the lip then just dip the bait. It also isn't too hard to dip a bait around a lip. I used to dip a lot of foam cranks in the solo cup mixture (virgin lacquer thinner) and had some acrylic/acetone to seal a few baits and never had an issues.

Almost certainly will be cloudy. At the lab amazing all the high dollar enclosures we have that someone decided to clean an area with acetone... I have not made many baits with PVC trim board (few dozen or so) but never really had issues with holes. The few I have I just used a 2 part epoxy wood putty or similar and filled and sanded.

Dip away. The acetone will flash off quickly and will not have any noticeably effect on the bond strength as very little epoxy will be exposed to the acetone in the first place and then only very limited duration as less then 30 seconds. Devcon for example lists acetone compatibility as poor... after 7 days immersion.

It looks like your master would be fine as a two piece based on the picture but angle may be deceiving. The seam will run across the back and belly but master should pop right out. I typically will drive a screw into the exposed half to pull the master out as can easily be patched if needed. Then as Dave pointed out use the soft plastic bait as a master. You can then make one piece molds wit it. Another option for prototype is you can mold with bondo body filler. The mold has a little give before it finally sets but just keep checking the consistency/temp of the mold to demold. I made a lot of crank bait molds that way over the years with no issues.

It appears your tail is rounded. If you mold in POP it will lock the master in place. Based on your picture if you were to mold it as a one piece currently it looks like it would be locked in place as the top of the tail rounds over. So in the bait above I screwed it to acrylic for my base and then built with legos the mold box around it. If I had used POP it would have run around the undercut area created at the tail/base interface and locked the bait it (eye recess and gill also). I molded this one with RTV first (not ideal and tail didn't move near as much as I would like). It is easy to see in the molds how far the RTV surrounded the tail because it was rounded at the top. If I made a two piece mold with the seam running across the back and side could have used POP. Just easy to not look at the master and think about locking it in place on the first few.

With some slight modification can easily make this into a POP mold and results will be really no different than a RTV for something as featureless as a tail. I would also highly recommend making the tail in POP first with tails. You may find out your current design doesn't perform the way you think. It can be a two piece mold.

As Bob mentioned the bait above a weighted hook hanger dead center may work just fine. You may find also that in order to get the equivalent weight you end up with a lot of weight higher up in the bait which some strive for. Others go to the other extreme and want to put weight as low as possible in the lure. It can change things up slightly and can make good bait into a great bait not so good. You can find x rays of some lures on line to show weight placement. This topic comes up ever so often so search the site and might find some really good information over the years. Sometimes may have to dig a little but can be rewarding if you come across it.

I would say most crank bait makers start buy just putting weight directly above the belly hook hanger. Over all this is a "safe" place to put weight in regards to a lure and having it function. You can mess with placing it higher up or lower in the bait and it can change action at that place. In time you will start to play with weight placement more to achieve specific things you want to do with cranks. Making the same bait and changing position about the best way to really learn to be honest. Many of the cranks I make I weight in various places. Most of my shallow baits that I fish in small rock/gravel areas will have weight more towards the nose as I want to get the bait down quickly and dragging/plowing in the gravel. It alters the diving angle to get their quicker to stay in the desired zone longer. I may want a similar nose down style to get down to stumps on creek channel quicker and longer.

Very ironic thinking that custom cranks historically was modifying through weighting commercial baits differently to perform for specific presentations or better. In my opinion learn to weight is the only way to go if you want to be able to build a variety of lures for different presentations and conditions. Most cranks and/or top waters will not function optimally without it as you simply won't be able to get the distribution correctly for it to preform. Drop a dozen different style cranks in a bucket and you will see they all sit with a different attitude. Take the KVD 1.0 in your picture. Have you looked at the weight displacement on it? Part of the way that lure functions will be do its stance in the water and weighting is the key. If you took the weight after the hook hanger in the belly and move it to the weight infront how would that bait perform. Dive quicker, deeper, decreased side to side displacement, quicker shorter movement, etc.. How about we move the weight to the tail, no weight, put all the weight in top/back of the lure.. It all can change the performance of the same bait. You could print it more solid in areas and try to get it balanced correctly but going to be hard to do. Would be easier to print in halves and add weight and glue or print half add weight and continue printing. Or print solid bait and have chamber to drill into and insert weight and seal chamber with epoxy.