LaPala

Can u mathematically model why a fish will eat your lure or mathematically derive a profile and action that will guarantee strikes? Even with CAD, it aids rapid prototyping; end of the day, you still need countless hrs on the water to know if the design works and refine the prototype.

Yes, acetone/prop can penetrate. How far would depend on the porosity of wood u use. First dip is a soak actually to let the solution saturate the wood. So Doomdart, prob does both

Yup, I concur with what Etch says. Seal with prop then when it fully cures, drop your lure to the floor & hear that sharp ping, nothing like wood sound at all. Nothing beats prop so far for ease of application too. Swede is a super nice guy to deal with.

Lip angle looks okay but the lip looks positively crooked from front view. Could try tow eye right on the nose too.

All factors in lure making are interrelated. So more info will be needed for diagnostic. Size, length, thickness, weight placement, wood type, front view so we can see the lip shape & size etc...

It's as it's name sake, an adhesion promoter. Lucky Craft uses it on all thier plastic cranks to enhance paint adhesion to plastic. Think of it as a glue for plastic to paint.

Are u talking plastic lure? What Paint type? Are u using same brand for all layers of paint? Layers dry enough b4 2nd coat; epoxy coat? Etc etc. Lots of issues along the process that will cause adhesion problem. If plastic lure & lacquer paints, a step that you might want look into would be to shoot a base coat of plastic adhesion promoter (example: DuPont Centari 800R, beware different formulations are made for diff plastics). The adhesion promoter will have surface prep instructions with it and which plastic it's designed for. I do not think a step by step is suitable as there will be too many variations and it'll depend on what u are using. Maybe u can outline your steps in detail so we can identify where the issue is.

Yup be realistic & fish it. Wanna over engineer ur lures, then test it on rip-rap and toothy fishes. There's other considerations like production method which might promote water entry which u can't see with dry testing alone. Epoxy is just one of the link in building a good lure, everything has to hold together for it to last.

Just came into this post fatfingers but seem you have already seen that Ed Walinski paint booth video Another way to do it is add a plenum at the back of the paint box and attach the fan to that. I did post a schematic of how i did mine b4, not sure if it's lost in the crash.

And many more to come Dean.

The nicest lure that is designed ground up to be upside down would be Megabass Anthrax. (I was inspired to design a few too , I might be showing it one day after I work out the effectiveness & kinks.)

Another manual option: http://www.wood-carver.com/ 2 more automated: http://www.carvewright.com/ http://www.maxnc.com/

Hardbait Tutorials (directory): Tutorials in TackleUnderground prepared by members. [ KB ] epoxy 3-d eyes [ KB ] Stainless Steel Lip Fabrication. The Hows and Whys. [ KB ] mold making 1,2,3 [ KB ] Hangers and Line Ties [ KB ] Photo Finishing Foil and Faux Finishes [ KB ] Hand Crafted Bomber [ KB ] Gills and mouth details made easy [ KB ] Silicone Clam Mold [ KB ] Plastic Dip for Sealing Wood Baits [ KB ] Making a lure drying wheel [ KB ] Half-moon & Slope-faced Poppers How-to [ KB ] The Making of Seluang [ KB ] Making A Bondo Mold and Expandable Foam Lures. [ KB ] Making a balsa wood minnow [ KB ] Topcoat using Flex Coat [ KB ] Wooden Lure Hardware Assembly [ KB ] Scale Patterns Explained [ KB ] Wooden Lure Prep [ KB ] Handmade Glass Rattles [ KB ] How to make your own lips [ KB ] Casting Lead ballast weights [ KB ] Belly weight and hook hanger in a balsa bait. [ KB ] Hook hangers in rear of balsa bait [ KB ] Basic Wood Lathe Tips PS: Please be patient as our webmaster, owner, admin of Tackleunderground is still working hard to restore the photos in the tutorials lost in the last server crash. But even without photos, the explanation alone is of great help PPS: With these available anyone asking DAQ should be shot

Hell, I think we need this in Hardbait section as a centralized collection & directory of all the information available in Tackleunderground. Lets all add to this. Any one doing searches finds some or new informative threads, stick it in here. (Please don't comment on this thread, just add links to great stuff) If you can't help it, find a nice link & add a PS lol Format: A) Brief description (and or Thread Title) Link to thread. Let me start with a few: Sealing with Probionate http://www.tackleunderground.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8603 Assortment of lure making tips http://www.tackleunderground.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7928 Doing Thru Wires http://www.tackleunderground.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8539 Lures Reveal, inside view of lureshttp://www.tackleunderground.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8482 Discussion about Sealing Lures http://www.tackleunderground.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8496 Okay, I went thru to page 5 of old posts in Hardbait section. Over to you guys.

I'm with Tally there, different degree of affordable and don't forget me here with a smaller dollar. And I would go for manual for simplicity. Automated to follow a model is good but fully automated with CAD/CAM the learning curve overhead could deter a lot of ppl ((they are already available anyway). Maybe you should ask yourself this Question: Who is my target customers?

Kahawai Husky, he's in Singapore now.

Good primer on propionate Palmetto Balsa. I was introduce to it by Swede who invested more than 8 years in sourcing for the material & also to finally determine which is the correct shore hardness of the pellets for lure building. As too high it becomes brittle and too low it does not serve the seal & protect purpose. Getting the correct shore hardness for the pellets is one of the key issues. PSSsss, let you in on a secret, Swede is getting his from the same source as Rapala and he's got too many kilograms of it Bug him if anyone wants some to try; price is really affordable too. A win win material for sealing and top coating if you want to do that too. skeeter jones, the trick with propionate solution is to go thin (consistency of milk/juice or thinner) and many dips.

Jed, Cheesehead is spot on with that amine blush. There is a ton of information on the web about this. Search for amine blush, non-blushing epoxy or epoxy blush, u'll have a few days of winter reading Amine blush manifest as greasy, waxy layer or in worse cases a whitish film. They are salts of amine carbonate. Depending on the type and formulation of the epoxy, amine compounds on the surface combine to various degrees with CO2 and water in humid air forming hydrates of amine carbonate. Although they are suppose to be water soluble, only effective removal is by abrasive. If you re-coat before the prior coat is completely cured, the new epoxy will dissolve the top layer of the 'old' coat and fuse 'chemically'. But if let cured, then even non-blushing epoxies will only let you get a mechanical bond between the 2 layers. Sanding is highly recommended to provide bite (and cleaned surface, since most epoxies we use does blush) and a stronger mechanical bond. I would go with subsequent coats b4 full cures, a chemical bond ensures you have a continuous epoxy layer instead of individual layers. Time to rethink some coating procedures? .

Thank You Husky for the high regards but I'll have to decline. I do not think it is appropriate to put anyone on the "high council". We have a lot of great makers here and some are not even on the net Yes it's a great feeling when u get to know people think highly of your work; it makes all the attention to details and quality worth it. But the world is full of talented people and some we may have not discovered yet due to language barrier and other reasons. Some who maybe in your view do not belong in "high council"; but lure making is a craft that encompasses a lot of medium and no one can be the master of all. Thru contributions from all, we can all gain and take the little steps in knowledge, techniques and towards a better mouse trap so to say. Everyone is equal here in that we all share the passion for lures and are willing to push ourselves to the next level. I think that is more than enough.

Here's me with a small sail.

Nice work Tigger.

Oops rofish, I pronounced your nick as roe fish , but I am half a fish as my job gets me in the water most times And phew, Dean escapes with just a hair space btw the projectiles. Now the crime scene is littered with rotten tomatoes. Hey what's that sulfuric smell too

LOL, I'm only human rofish. What Cheesehead is trying to tell you is I fk up my lures all the time and it takes a loooong time for me to produce one that i deem fishable. The is no real right or wrong in any craft, just do what your heart tells you is "the best you can do with what you have".

Well said Dean. Lure making is a culmination of fishing experience and craftsmanship. Nothing can be gain in a day or a year and like Skeeter said, there is always room for improvement. So push on Cory, you will have "arrived" one fine day if you keep at it. Then it's ur turn to push the limits. It never ends.

In reference to the thread "Lots of Questions.." in The Docks. As discussed in the thread I referred to, Sealing or Not Sealing of wooden baits seem to elicit difference in opinion on whether it should be done or not. Or the issue seem to be just seal with the paint and primer but not bother with using a different sealer specifically for the purpose, then let the top coat take care of water entry issues. Here's my take: Sealing of a wooden lure is done for a few reasons, as protection for the wood beneath from water entry to harden a soft wood as a base for paint to adhere to to smooth out ur lure to prevent air escaping from wood in hot day blistering your paint and KCDano added To reduce the number of paint applications to achieve coverage by preventing absorption speed up production To reduce cost We make custom lure for a few reasons, part of it is to make something we can't buy, tweaked to what we need and to produce a more durable bait. Sometimes we do things with disregard to cost as well. What I'm trying to point out is that what Cheesehead expressed very well, "I still strive to do the best I can with what I have." In this age of technological wonders and material improvements; there ARE sealers specifically more suited to be used as a sealer and preserve wood then paint. For example probionate pellets dissolved in acetone. Dipping/soaking in the solution actually soaks the plastic into your wood and subsequent dippings deposit the plastic as a barrier layer on your wood. So essentially why we want to do this is to have the wood completely protected. The paint may peel, our Devcon top coat can crack from shooting onto rocks but I have this security layer underneath that protect the lure and it would perform as design regardless. Imagine you have a killer lure that the fish just won't stop hitting, after an hour "harvesting" fish u find the action of the lure is getting sluggish by the minute & u are loosing strikes. Is this worth all the hours of carving, custom painting, tuning of the lure u made? There's even more problem if u're fishing for toothy fishes, do you want to make a 2 fish lure? After the 2nd bite, the tooth holes in ur lure allowed enough water in to kill the action of your lure. In making custom lures, I do not believe in shortcuts, nor cutting corners. I want all the characters of a good lure and they have to be durable. So to seal specifically or not, it's still you as the maker who has to decide ---- a good solid durable lure or a lure that has to be dried on the clothes line after every fishing trip?