BobP

JMHO, I don't see any particular need to clearcoat raw foil before painting it. The only reason I would do it would be to hide the edges but you can burnish the edges of Venture Brite-Bak foil so they virtually disappear.

Mark, penetration depends on what you use to dissolve it, I guess. I use acetone and have never had much luck trying to dissolve it in anything else. I've never cut a bait open to see how far into the balsa it penetrated, but it does adhere well. The downside is you need to use a thin solution and dip your lure 5-10 times to build up a good smooth film on the wood. If the prop is too thick, it will sag and leave ripples in the film. The upside is acetone evaporates very quickly, so 3-5 minutes between dips is plenty. A prop coating is not as hard as CA but has more "give". I think it works well on balsa and is quite cost-effective (if that matters). I've never used CA to coat baits. For one thing, I'm suspicious of its shock resistance but also think it's sort of pricey compared to epoxy or propionate.

No problem. CA doesn't penetrate that deep into the wood.

Failures like that can be hard to diagnose but my guess is that some part of your finish absorbed water and pushed the finish off the bait. Perhaps the DN moisture cured urethane did not soak through the other finish coats down to the undercoat as it usually does, leaving an element of the underlying finish vulnerable to water absorption. Most of us use some kind of a "Devil's Brew" of finishes so it's impossible to predict which combinations of coatings will work until we try them. One reason a thick epoxy topcoat is popular on musky baits is that prevents teeth from ever penetrating to the underlying finish layers. If water never gets below the topcoat, the finish will never delaminate.

I've been using the Future floor polish for awhile now and it works fine but I have an issue with it. When mixed with Future, some Createx airbrush paints precipitate their solids into a hard, un-mixable layer at the bottom of the bottle during storage. That pretty much renders the paint worthless. I never know which paints will do this. One that has is the Createx Neon Yellow. Has anyone else had this experience?

I use Venture Brite-Bak tape and it's thin enough to burnish the edges so they almost disappear. The Brite-Bak also takes a sharper-defined scale embossing than a/c tape, which I like. It's designed for stained glass artists and costs around $10 per roll.

Epoxy hardens through a chemical cure process, not drying, so the thickness of the coat doesn't matter. Unless you get a bad batch of epoxy (rare) or try to coat a lure that is still outgassing significant amouts of solvents from a previous finish step, soft epoxy is due either to failure to measure the components accurately or failure to mix the components enough. Of the two, failure to mix is more likely. Whatever the brand or type of epoxy, it should be sag-free within 4-5 hrs and be smooth and hard within 24 hrs. If it's still soft at 24 hrs, it will never get hard and the only fix is to apply another coat of epoxy which will harden the first coat along with itself. I pour out visually equal pools of Devcon Two Ton and really mix the hell out of it. When finished, it's milky white from the small air bubbles I've introduced. No problem. Mix in a FEW drops of denatured alcohol to release most of the bubbles. Brushing it on the lure removes the rest. You didn't specify the brand/type of epoxy you're using but a search on "epoxy" on this forum will lead you to tons of info on brands, methods, etc that should help resolve any issues.

I think many guys use an intermediate clearcoat over raw foil mostly to hide the foil margins, which is probably a good idea if you're using the thick a/c tape. I've never used the intermediate clear, even before I switched to thinner craft foil from a/c tape. I've just painted directly on the foil. Does it adhere as well as painting onto an intermediate clearcoat? Maybe not but the final topcoat holds the paint on just fine and doing away with the intermediate clearcoat means one less step. I've never had a foil finish delaminate, so it seems to work OK.

I don't think there's any significant odor to water based airbrush paints. I paint in my garage and just lay out newspaper to catch the overspray. Some of the spray turns to dust, which can be an issue depending on the setting. If you shoot inside a non-ventilated box, the dust can get blown around by later airbrushing and settle on still-wet lures.

I put a piece of blue painter's tape over the lip and clip the lures on the turner with alligator clips. During painting, I use Woodenfeather's method, with pieces of Lexan or circuit board - and hold the baits with clamping forceps while I paint.

Thanks Mark, that's an interesting approach. BTW, I don't think you use DN S81 MCU but it works great to fill in Lexan scratches and clarify the bill- and it's tough enough to stay on there.

If you can make a good Wart copy, you're a better man than me, Gunga Din. I tried it once and failed! And I can't figure a way to get the same scooped lip shape without heating and bending Lexan - which I know is possible but don't want to get into. The exercise taught me to be more careful in choosing baits to emulate. Can't comment on the Rapala "Original Warts" because I've never tried them.

Not many commercial baits hunt, and for good reason. Hunting is generated by a bait that is almost, but not quite, out of control. During the retrieve, it kicks out momentarily to both sides but will always come back to the retrieve center line. If it stalls during the excursions, that's not hunting. If you have a bait with a standard low ballast that runs straight without hunting, raising the height of the ballast in the lure is one thing to try (among others) to make the lure less stable and induce hunting. Sometimes it works, but not always. Most bait manufacturers purposely design baits that won't hunt. If you mold a thousand baits that are on the edge of instability in order to get hunters, variability in manufacture will result in a significant percentage of baits just run straight, and some others that slip "over the edge" and will be un-tunable. Guys who buy the un-tunable ones are not happy customers. A good example of this is the original Wiggle Wart. They are a cult bait because of their erratic hunting action. Less publicized is the fact that along with the hunters, there were plenty that didn't, and quite a few others that were impossible to tune. Maybe developments in manufacturing controls now make it feasible to produce a bait that reliably hunts, without the non-hunters and the duds. Personally, I'm skeptical that Strike King has pulled that off with the KVD square bills because I don't see Japanese-like perfection in them that would lead me to believe it. But time will tell. That certainly doesn't mean that you can't take the KVD design as a starting point to design your own wood bait that will hunt.

Undercoating/sealing does several things: stops the grain from popping if you paint the lure with water based paint, acts as a last barrier to water intrusion if the rest of the finish is damaged, provides a smooth hard surface for a more attractive paint job regardless of what kind of paint you use. If you're asking whether you can use nail polish as an undercoating, the answer is yes. Seems like a pretty expensive option, but to each his own. You didn't provide any other detail about how you plan to finish your bait, so a lot is open to conjecture. If you want to paint lures with nail polish, yes, the nail polish can do dual duty as both an undercoating and a color coat. Since it is both shiny and waterproof, you could in fact just paint raw wood with it and fish it - no topcoat required. Would most crankbait painters opt for this method? Nope. It just won't be as durable as a multi-coat finish, nor will it be as smooth, nor will you be able to blend color or do detail like you can with an airbrush, for a more attractive and lifelike bait. But is it feasible? Yeah.

Try using something called FRISKET for making stencils - it's designed exactly for that. It's a thin plastic film, adhesive on one side, with a peel-off paper backing. Easy to cut with an X-acto knife. A big roll of frisket costs around $10-12 and in the small amounts we use on crankbaits, a roll will last years and years. When I first got some, I tried using the frisket as advertised, i.e., draw your pattern on the paper, cut it out, peel off the backing, and stick it on the lure. Problem: the adhesive tends to pull paint off the lure when you remove it. A better Plan B: leave the paper backing on the frisket, just hold it against the lure and shoot your paint. Wipe the frisket dry, flip it over and do the other side of the lure. Benefits: you get exactly the same detail on both sides of the lure; the stencil becomes re-usable and will last indefinitely for other lures. I have a library of stencils now and rarely need to cut a new one.

It's been a couple of years since I've built any rods so I don't know the latest guides. In the Fuji line, SIC is the hardest but I've never heard anyone reporting an Alconite guide being grooved by braid or anything else. I've always tended to use the Alconites for their performance versus price. I doubt there would be any problem with Fuji Hardloy guides either. Unless you are using an all metal guide, I doubt you'd have a problem with any ceramic guide type.

I sometimes put a single octopus hook on the rear of a small 1/4 oz fat balsa crankbait, and it works fine. I use a standard hook hanger and split ring so I can change out the hook if necessary. If you go that route, you need to pay attention to the hook hanger's direction when you make the bait so it sync's direction with the split ring and hook. You also need to be aware that many single hooks are heavier than the treble hook they will replace, and that will kill the action on a crankbait if you're not careful - so design the bait around the fact that you plan on using that style hook.

I use a cheap calligraphy pen. They are basically a plastic stick with a fountain pen nib stuck on one end, and cost a couple of bucks at a craft store. Dip it in black Createx acrylic paint and you can make a signature that has finer lines than an Ultra Fine Sharpie - and it won't run when hit by a solvent based clearcoat.

Maybe Dave will happen along and put us straight about the density of epoxy, but if I recall, cured epoxy has a density of 1.07 versus 1.00 for water so it is slightly heavier and will not float, per se. I usually estimate that a coat of D2T will add around .02 oz to an average sized bass bait, which has worked well for me when building baits to a target weight. Does the small increase in bait volume (and therefore bait buoyancy) entirely offset the added weight of the epoxy? I don't know. Oh Dave... where are you?

Whether to use 3 versus 2 trebles on jerkbaits, and where the hooks are installed are interesting questions. If you look at why certain jerkbaits are more popular than others, one clear tendency for "more popular" is having 3 versus 2 treble hooks. An example might be the LC Pointer (2) versus the Slender Pointer (3). There's a bias toward the Slender Pointer among pro tourney fishermen and the extra treble is a big part of it. How the belly treble acts on a bait is also a big determinant of how popular a bait will be. If hangs up on the bait's lip 20% of the time, or if it fouls on the line with any frequency, that bait will not become popular. When you hit the sweet spot on a piece cover with that all-important first cast, it is very frustrating to find your bait tangled in the line or the treble hooked around the lip so there is zero chance of retrieving the bait properly or getting bit. I strongly believe everyone should build their baits exactly the way they think is best. But I also think there is usually some method to the madness when the larger community of fishermen show preferences. I build baits to suit myself, not the general fishing public, but it's worth thinking about why their preferences exist.

JMHO, if you have a bait that does exactly what you want, go with it. Changing wood is a big change and may require "starting from scratch" on some of the bait's features.

I've always had problems epoxy topcoating lures with any sharp edges on them. You won't notice it when the epoxy is first applied but it will naturally pull away from any sharp edge on the bait, leaving a very thin film that is easily damaged. If your bait has sharp edges on the segments, that's a problem. You can address it by sanding the edges to a radius but for true durability, it's probably much better to use a moisture cured urethane or an auto 2 part topcoat.

The nominal density of alder in a list I found is 26-42 lbs/cu ft, so it varies more than most woods. The most dense wood I regularly use is basswood, with a nominal density of 23 lbs/cu ft. But a very light piece of alder in the 26 lbs/cu ft range would probably work OK. Can't comment on the screw holding ability of the wood.

I agree with littleriver; I think the lip is too long and the bait will be uncontrollable. I've tried longer lips on baits with the line tie in the nose, thinking that I'd just start long and trim it down gradually to get the right length. Somehow, that just never seems to work out for me. If you want a bait to dive more than 4-5 ft, IMO you need to get the line tie out on the surface of the lip instead of in the nose, and use less lip angle. Lure-Prof is right about the irony but on the other hand I think the absolute best way to start out building crankbaits is to copy successful designs. They are successful because they were developed by professionals and they actually catch fish. That's no mean feat. I don't fear that a wood copy of a RC2.5 will be "too close for comfort" to a plastic RC2.5. In the first place, nobody will ever get the copy exact. And because it's from wood, the bait will behave very differently. But at least you will have eliminated some of the design pitfalls that you know nothing about and will otherwise have to learn through bitter experience. Build it, fish it, and start modifying the design over several generations and that will teach you a lot about crankbaits.

You can still use it as long as it's liquid - which, honestly, probably won't be as long as you'd like. When it develops a skin, you can still get MCU from under the skin and use it. I would siphon some off from below the skin and use it to brush finish on lures. If you can clear off the skin, you can still dip but be careful of getting any globs of finish on the lure. Once MCU starts to cure in the can, there's nothing much you can do to stop it from progressing. That's why you read recommendations to decant it into several air tight jars and use Bloxygen every time you close one of the containers. And it's why you should not let MCU drip back into the container after you dip a lure into it - those drops pick up moisture. Sounds a little extreme, right? Well, it is but it's what you need to do it if you want to use most of the stuff before it becomes a glob of useless MCU jelly.