BobP

Createx has an "Iridescent Electric Blue" that might work well. It's a strong shiny dark blue. Not a transparent but it would work well over foil (or without foil).

J - I get soft temper stainless "safety lock wire" from McMaster-Carr. Here's a link: http://www.mcmaster.com/#stainless-steel-safety-lock-wire/=ak5rcc 8860K15 is the catalog # for a 1/4 lb spool of .041" (they sell various diameters in various size spools). McMaster-Carr also carries other crankbait raw materials like polycarbonate (aka Lexan) sheets, circuit board sheets, hard stainless wire, etc. Good service and some of the best prices I've found for these items if you can navigate their huge inventory of choices.

Chas, If you're using rattle can paint, not many of us have experience with it so you won't get much response. All I can suggest is you choose a single brand and line of paint because then you will not have an issue of bubbling or wrinkling when you coat one paint with another (like polyurethane over or under an enamel). Most of us shoot a white color basecoat overall, then colors, then a topcoat. D2T (yes, it's sold as a 30 minute glue) will work fine as a topcoat. Let the paint off gas its solvents for several days, then mix some D2T up, mix in a few drops of denatured alcohol, and brush it on. You need to rotate the bait for about 30-40 minutes after application to prevent the epoxy migrating down the bait. If you don't have a motorized lure turner, you can put wire hangers in the nose and tail of the bait and just switch it upside down every little while until the epoxy begins to harden. Alternatively, you can spray on a clear coat from the same brand/family as your paint. Some of them probably work OK and it's a lot easier than using epoxy. Hope this helps!

I cut 2 small slots in the back of the lip, fill the slot with epoxy and push the lip in, wiping off the epoxy squeezed out the sides. You can also sand polycarbonate or circuit board to give the epoxy more surface area to grip inside the lip slot. Haven't had a lip come out yet, after several hundred baits. If you feel goosey about it, you could always drill a small hole from the bottom of the bait through the installed lip and use a screw for added security. Personally, I think that just becomes an area of possible water infiltration in a wood bait. But it's an option. If you want to "go wild", you can run the wire from the line tie back through the bait and make it 100% continuous through-wire with one piece of wire forming the line tie, belly and tail hanger. I think that's overkill for bass baits, but not for big musky baits.

J, assume we're talking SOFT temper stainless wire. I've used .031" soft temper on shallow divers (line tie in the nose) with zero problems but found .041 dia soft wire was better on medium and deep divers (line tie out on the lip) because the twisted wire run from the line tie to the lip slot will not torque. If you're using HARD temper stainless, you can go down to at least .029" dia with no problem on any bass bait. .029" hard stainless leader wire is 180 lb test. What's gonna break that? At some point, I think you get into the area of aesthetics more than function - what "looks right". Soft brass wire was used on some of the best classic balsa baits from the 1970's and it looks like .041" dia to me. Soft stainless is just a little harder than soft brass and it will not corrode like brass, so... Ben - superglue is interesting but isn't it pretty expensive? It's like $3.50 for 1/3 oz at Home Depot. I don't doubt it works fine and I'm not really a cheapskate, but...

Good looking crankbaits! I also like to use 8-9 dips of propionate on light balsa and think it works OK. If you want a durable bait, you should also consider using a thru-wire frame inside. If you mark a center line on the bait before you begin shaping it, cutting soft balsa along the center line for the frame is very to do with a razor blade. And you get a big jump in durability when you glue the halves of the bait back together with 5 minute epoxy. I like to use SOFT temper .041 stainless steel "safety wire" for my thru-wire frames (and all my hardware tasks for that matter). It's easy to bend, conforms well inside the bait with minimal grooving to make it fit, is plenty strong enough for bass baits, and makes the baits easy to tune without breaking the finish around the nose of the bait.

Netman, another TUer posted a link to Moore's new catalog on the Docks forum and I notice they have tempered size 0 split rings that are 45 lb pull test. Might want to check them out.

Glad you stopped by to say hello! When you get through messing with cars, there's still lures to make and fish to be caught!

Don't know about you Dave, but being wet AND happy is fine with me. Sometimes it's even ideal.

I don't use #1 split rings on anything except baits that use #8 treble hooks, and I haven't seen any 2X #1 split rings anywhere.

Balsa has a density of between 6 and 18 lbs/cu ft. A lot of the balsa you see is intended for model builders. It tends to be lighter, low density balsa. Many crankbait builders prefer to work with high density 12-18 lb balsa. It's considerably more tougher and crankbaits from it don't require special, extensive reinforcement to make them acceptably durable. Downside? You probably have to special order it from a balsa company. If you are a hobby builder and don't mind doing the extra work needed to make low density balsa more durable, the crankbaits you can make from it can have very high buoyancy - which is not necessarily a bad thing. It just depends on what you want to build and how much trouble you are willing to go through to do it.

JMHO - If you want knockoffs that fish the same as the original, no. Knockoffs resemble the original but never have the same internals and so never are really the same. I guess I'm more pessimistic than Mark, but over the years I've tried many unpainted blanks from many sources and found only a few "winners". The winners perform well in their own right but very different from the original they were attempting to copy. Put enough monkeys in front of enough typewriters, and one will eventually hand you a Shakespeare sonnet. That said, if you sort through the offerings, you will find a few that are good crankbaits. IMO, you stand a better chance among the shallow crankbaits and topwaters. One I like is the Janns Netcraft Shallow FG diver, a small 1/4 oz fat square lip bait. If you have Academy Sports in your area, their H2O series of crankbaits have an enthusiastic following and are often the "raw material" for repainters.

Failure of epoxy to harden is caused 99% of the time by one of 2 things: Not mixing the epoxy really well or not measuring the hardener/resin exactly enough. D2T will stand a little fudging on the measurement side but it is more viscous than other topcoat epoxies and requires really thorough mixing. If it has lumps and is not curing, bad mixing is probably the culprit. If you're mixing in cool temps, a FEW drops of denatured alcohol will thin the mix and make it easier to blend without introducing a lot of air bubbles. It also extends the brush time so you don't have to be in a panic to get it mixed and on the lure. Lastly, a sanity check - be sure you didn't use Devcon 5 Minute Epoxy instead of the correct Devcon Two Ton epoxy. Been there, done that!

I use D2T as a sealer quite often. Mix it up then mix in a few drops of denatured alcohol, to whatever consistency you like to brush. Sand with 400 grit when cured to remove gloss and any rough end grain raised by the alcohol. Repeat if you had to sand into raw wood anywhere. It makes for a very smooth, durable, chemically inert undercoating. D2T can be sanded after curing 8-10 hours at room temperature, so it goes faster than Etex in that application.

DH, you have a coating incompatibility. Except through trial and error, it's very hard to fix if you use a random mix of solvent based coatings. Manufacturers use different solvents and not all of them are compatible, nor are many of them designed to be layered over one another. To simplify painting, I avoid solvent based coatings whenever possible. Where you use an auto primer, I use a coat of 30 minute epoxy on raw wood baits - which is relatively inert when it has cured. Sand it up to give your paint some tooth, then shoot your colors. Then topcoat the bait with a solvent based clear or with another coat of slow cure epoxy (Devcon Two Ton, Envirotex Lite, Flexcoat, Nu Lustre 55 are examples). If you use lacquer or polyurethane for a topcoat, it will have nothing to react with if there are no solvent based coating under it.

Red and black craw is a classic. If your crankbait swims well, it will get bit regardless of the pattern details. If you want to refine the pattern to get more "realism" (I hesitate to use that term with crankbaits), crawdads have a bunch of different body parts moving as they travel, so I like craw patterns that are more complex to simulate some of that movement. Personally, the only way I can get that is with a paint template.

Well, you could PM Tim, whose handle here on TU is Hughsey, and ask.

I've done lots of baits just as you describe with no failures, so the solution doesn't jump out for me. I generally feel that if you can get epoxy on the bait and cured, any paint weaknesses underneath become moot. As long as the epoxy lasts, it's gonna be OK. If it doesn't, nothing underneath it will survive. A little oil from your fingers on the bait? To me, that seems more likely to result in an epoxy fisheye rather than delamination. I'm just spitballing here, but wonder how much heat you apply when you heat cure the paint? I use a hair dryer and hit it just long enough to dry the previous paint layer before shooting the next. If you hit it hard enough to make the bait expand, that would recreate your problem.

If the epoxy is just marred, why not just put on another coat of epoxy? It will cure any scratches in the original epoxy coating. Thin the new epoxy with a little denature alcohol if you want a thinner coating added to the original one. If you need to sand the original to fix a bad spot, new epoxy will fill in the sanding scratches and make them disappear. But if you sand into the paint, you might as well take it all off and start from scratch. BTW, freshly cured epoxy will peel pretty easily once you get it started with a sharp knife.

I can't speak to using lacquer but have used D2T on a ton of baits. I think you need to further describe your repainting process to narrow down the problem. Are we talking plastic or wood baits? You say you sand the old finish. If wood, do you sand down to raw wood or just lightly sand the old finish? Do you use a primer or undercoating? If so, what exactly is it? Do you shoot water based or solvent based paint? When you say paint is separating, is it coming off in sheets after fishing, or does it delaminate before they ever get wet? Reading hundreds of TU posts, I think "primers" cause more problems than any other finish component. But you need to get into the details to really isolate and correct finish problems.

It's common for guys trying balsa for the first time to buy wood that's intended for model aircraft or other projects where a very light balsa is a plus. I did the same thing and ended up with a box of "competition balsa" a few years ago. Waste not, want not - I've been building crankbaits from the stuff for several years. When it's gone, I'll order some medium or high density balsa. Balsa has a density from 6 to 18 lbs/cu ft. Competition balsa is the very light stuff; you want to be in the 12-18 lb/cu ft density range for crankbaits. It is possible to use low density balsa but you need to take pains to reinforce it more than would be required on most baits. In other words, it's sort of a pain in the butt. But the resulting baits have tons of buoyancy, a definite plus in a bait designed for fishing shallow heavy cover. It's why balsa crankbaits exist! Here's how I use light balsa and get away with it: Mark a center line on the top and bottom of the bait before you start shaping and sanding, and don't sand it away! After sanding the blanks, split them along the center line with a razor blade and fit in a through-wire frame for the line tie and hook hangers, then glue the halves of the bait together with 5 minute epoxy. You can also glue in the belly ballast at the same time so it is entirely concealed. The wire frame and epoxy give the bait a solid, durable "backbone". Then apply 2 coats of slow cure (in my case, Devcon Two Ton) epoxy thinned with a little denatured alcohol so that it soaks into the exterior surface for a good bond, sanding smooth between the coats. After painting and a topcoat of Devcon Two Ton, the baits are very fishable. But like all balsa baits, you can break one if you slap the water with it to clear weeds off the trebles. Otherwise, they wear about as well as balsa baits made from higher density balsa. BTW, I've had best luck drilling ballast holes in balsa with a Dremel steel shaping cylinder bit chucked in a Dremel rotary tool. No surface tear-out at all due to the very high speed. Dremel shaping cylinders have shallow grooves on top that allow them to do double duty as a high speed drill bit in wood. It's not a recommended use by Dremel, so take it for what it's worth and here's one caution: When used as a drill bit, the cylinder will not expel dust like a regular drill bit, so you need to pause and tap the dust out a few times while drilling a ballast hole. It also helps to give the bit a little circular wiggle while it goes down into the wood, to create a little free space for the dust to accumulate safely. If you do neither, the dust can build up in the hole and make the bit stick at 20K rpm, which will pretty much destroy your crankbait, no matter what kind of wood you're using. Like I say, it's not something the shaping cylinders are designed for, but it works.

I agree with Blackjack on where to put the ballast but am wondering about the target weight of 6 grams, or less than 1/4 oz. Put some finish, a lip, and trebles on them and they may exceed 6 grams with no ballast at all. A bass bait less than 1/4 oz is difficult to cast and a flat wood crankbait also tends to sail, so I like medium size bass baits to weigh at least 3/8 oz, or 10-11 grams. I work up to a target weight by weighing all the components on a scale, adding .03-.04 oz for finish, .05 oz for #6 trebles and split rings - then subtracting the total from my target weight to get the ballast needed. I'd expect around .1 oz of ballast in a bait that size. Many of us use integrated belly weights that include a belly hanger molded into a slug of lead ballast, but if you are just making a few and using wire hook hangers epoxied into the bait, I would put the ballast directly in front of the belly hanger. JMHO

I apologize in advance if you already know about crankbait tuning - but if there is not an internal problem, like a ballast ball that got glued inside where it shouldn't be, it sounds like you just need to tune the bait. Take some needle nose pliers and bend the line tie slightly in the direction opposite the direction the bait wants to run. Cast it out 20 ft and see how it runs after the adjustment. If it's just a tuning problem, you can fix it by small incremental adjustments left/right to the line tie. It's a very typical problem with crankbaits, though most Lucky Craft baits are built to such good quality standards that it's fairly rare to find one that doesn't run straight right out of the package. If tuning won't work, there's an internal problem and I'd return it to BassPro for an exchange I'm also assuming you tie your line directly to the stock split ring that comes on the bait, and are not using additional snaps or swivels on your line. Added hardware can cause an imbalance in the "pull point" and make the bait run as if it's out of tune.

Yeah, it's whatever works best for you. There's certainly no performance issue as long as the lips are straight. I don't like the job of putting masking tape on/taking it off lips, so I glue lips in after painting but before clearcoating. When and how you do it flows along with the rest of the way you build. For instance, I like to hold baits by a lip with locking forceps while painting. Since I don't mount the lips until later (and I don't want to mar the lip with forceps), I cut some "false lips" out of lip material and fit them into the lip slots, padding them out with a little masking tape if needed so there's a good friction fit into the slot. Makes a nice secure thingy to grip with the forceps while painting. The false lips have holes drilled in their ends so I can hang the baits on nails along a shelf over my workbench while painting a series of baits. When finished, I pull out the false lips and save them for next time. It's just the method I've developed to suit the way I work, and it fits my work area.

Bill - If you're happy, you're happy. The only downsides I can think of might be yellowing of the finish from UV exposure and the fact that you're spraying lacquer thinner through an airbrush, which is hazardous without a mask rated for organic solvents. I'm wondering, have you considered just dipping the baits in the lacquer?