BobP

IMO, amoisture cred urethane is best. Dip it, hang it, done. The most popular is KBB Diamond coat, an automotive brand.

Up to a point, the narrower the lip the more rocking motion a bait will have, flashing its sides up and down. Wider lips have much less rock and more tail wag. If you make a lip more narrow than the width of the bait, it can cause the bait to blow out and begin to spin on a constant retrieve. That matters more on regular crankbaits and less on jerkbaits.

In my experience, a moisture cured urethane is the thinnest tough hard topcoat you can use on spoons. Dick Nite spoons used to sell the MCU he uses on his manufactured spoons to TU members at a discount. Don’t know if that’s still true but another MCU that is popular is KBS Diamond topcoat which is sold by many automotive parts companies online. kBS is a little thicker than Dick Nite but it’s easier to store without beginning to cure hard. You might also buy a custom thinner from KBS if you want to customize viscosity.

The brand of glow paint I used is out of business now. I really recommend using very coarse grain paint because it will glow much stronger. Particle size is every thing. I’ve seen commercial air brush glow painted lures and they’re pretty dim in comparison. If dim is what you’re after, fine. I’m just saying.

I built a bunch of glow jigging spoons by painting on 4 coats of acrylic glow paint. The paint had large glow grains so couldn’t be airbrushed but large grains = more glow. It leveled out pretty well and I topcoated it with moisture cured urethane. These spoons proved to be very durable and the glow is strong enough to literally read a newspaper in a dark room. They catch bass great when I go deep jigging in the winter.

Commercial screw eyes are vulnerable if you put them in balsa baits without also epoxying the hole they’re in. A hard knock can loosen the eye and cause it to rip out. If it loosens but doesn’t rip out, water will infiltrate and ruin the bait anyway. I prefer hand twisted screw eyes epoxied into pre-drilled holes. I’ve never had a failure with them. Making a durable balsa bait, or any wood bait for that matter, is mostly about stopping water infiltration.

21xdc nailed it for the parameters you set.

.041 wire is just right for all but the smallest or largest cranks. But the secret is that it needs to be SOFT TEMPER stainless wire, not the hard stuff.

Like 21xdc, I think the lip should be at a larger down angle. However, we don’t really know the size or weight of the bait. If it’s heavy, the lip surface area needs to increase to impart enough vortex to make it wiggle and rock. Also, performance might benefit by putting the nose eyelet just below the nose point instead of above it. It reminds me of a Rapala balsa floating minnow. Very nice looking! I’d take a look at a Rapala and copy that design exactly.

As a generalization, most lipped bass crankbaits are weighted near the belly hook hanger. In fact, many of them use an integrated belly weight/hook hanger. On larger baits, like for musky, the ballast is often more distributed to affect performance. If your bait design is represented by diagrams you included, I have no earthly idea where to begin.

I add a FEW drops of denatured alcohol to D2T to thin it out a bit and also to e tend the work time a couple of minutes. Maybe 4 drops into enough epoxy to coat 2 medium bass baits.

You’re using it.

I get wire from McMaster-Carr online. Lots of types, lots of sizes, pretty good prices.

Like most of the above, I’d opt for KBS. It’s clear, cures well, and yields a tough high luster coating. Big plus: you simply dip lures into it and hang them to drip and cure. Optionally, you can brush it on and hang it. I use several coats to build a very good coating.

I build various size baits and a store-bought stencil kit wouldn’t be very useful, if that’s what you’re talking about. I went to an art store and bought a roll of FRISKET, which. Is paper with a peel off plastic backing. After using it awhile, I realized it was best if I didn’t take the adhesive backing off and instead just held it against the lure. Added benefit, you can keep the template and build a library of them. Frisket is easy to cut with a razor knife.

I painted some spoons with acrylic airbrush paint and topcoated with Dick Nite Fishermun’s Lurecoat, which is a moisture cured urethane. The Dick Nite seemed to penetrate the paint and adhere directly to the metal, forming a very durable finish. No primer was needed. Dick Nite is a spoon manufacturer who also sells paint and topcoats. Mark above mentioned an important detail - your primer, paint, and topcoat are a related system. Not all paints work with all primers and not all urethanes work with all primers. I tried an aerosol auto primer on some spoons and hated the esthetic result and the strong residual smell. Bottom line, you may have to experiment to get a finish you want.

Amen. Ben was a very good friend for the TUers who knew him.

I think basswood is similar in density (23 lbs/cu ft) and much nicer to sand and finish to a creamy white texture. It’s also widely available in hobby shops.

I’m mostly a Devcon 2 ton user but you gotta respect builders that swear by Etex. Their baits are often some of the most beautiful to be found. I looked for the Fatfingers tutorial I mentioned but couldn’t find it. The primary suggestion it made was to mix the Etex and let it sit for 12-15 minutes before application to allow some of the solvent to flash off and let the epoxy start to cure slightly. I haven’t heard a lot of complaints about Etex, except that it is more prone to fisheye than other epoxies. Frankly, I didn’t use it because it requires longer to cure and multiple coats to build up a finish as thick as glue or casting epoxies single coat. Nowadays, I mostly use KBS MCU in 2-3 dip coats. It’s the lazy man’s finish.

Whittler, I surely don't “know it all” after 25 yrs of building lures but the idea of acrylic paint curing escapes me. I’ve not heard of any chemical reaction taking place after application of water based paint, which would constitute curing. I always thought it just lays there and dries. I use a hair dryer after shooting every color and don’t have a problem clearcoating lures soon after. Redaddy24, Etex lite is a good product but it takes peculiar application procedures to apply it over a painted wooden lure. I suggest going to Member Submitted Tutorials and looking for a tutorial by Fatfingers for best Etex practices. Bar top epoxies like Etex contain lots of solvent to expel bubbles while curing. Casting and glue epoxies don’t, which can make them easier to use.

Etex in multiple coats is popular with guys who build large musky baits. I’ve used Devcon Two Ton glue epoxy for years on bass baits with good results and it has good abrasion resistance, so I still use it on baits that will be trolled for hours. I really prefer to use moisture cured urethane on most bass baits, usually with 2-3 dip coats to build up a thicker coating to fend off rash. For the same thickness of coating, I think MCU is just as tough as epoxy.

Yep, PPE protection is not a bad idea if you are concerned. I don’t expose my skin to a uv lamp for more than a few seconds, and I don’t look into the super strong light either. How much exposure is too much? Well, suntans are caused by uv light too. And sunlight contains the widest spectrum uv radiation. Do you mummify yourself before fishing? Some do. But I think a common sense approach to handling lures under uv is sufficient. Whatever works for you.

I’ve tried a few different uv polyester clearcoats, most recently Chinese resin from Amazon. You don’t really know the quality of this stuff, which is sold for amateur jewelry making. Having the right uv light source is important. My fingernail uv lamp from Amazon was not a good match and I had to set the lures out in the sun on a lure turner to get them hard. After storing them for a few months, I found the clearcoat was becoming somewhat tacky again. I gave up and returned to using KBS moisture cured polyurethane, which yields a hard very clear tough coating.

If you’re gonna build 500 baits I guess it would be cost efficient to buy a press and have a tool steel punch made professionally. Got a few hundred bucks? But as a hobby builder, I think using Wiss aircraft snips to rough out the lip and a Dremel sander to finish the lip is an easy and efficient way to go. It takes me maybe 45 minutes to shape 6-8 lips this way. Of course, I build bass baits and use 1/16 inch thick G-10 sheet. Using very thick G-10 would be a problem but I use thin stock expressly for better lip performance and so do commercial bait makers.

There is no topcoat that won’t hook rash. Epoxies are only slightly more dense than water so you might be surprised at how well a bait will float with even a fairly thick epoxy coating. IMO, the thinnest and hardest topcoat is probably moisture cured urethane such as KBS.