BobP

Like Ben said, frisket is made for painting and cuts easily with an Xacto knife. I bought a roll 8 yrs ago and it looks like it will last at least as long as I do. I got a "light tack" variety and tried peeling and sticking it on (how it is designed to work) but found that even light tack paper can pull the acrylic paint off a crankbait, so I started leaving the paper backing on the template. In doing that, you can flip over the template and shoot both sides of the bait with one template. One template = get both sides of a bait exactly the same. And you can save the template and do a bunch of baits with it. It bends fairly easily, which helps, but if you do lots of the same bait, some guys prefer heat fitting plastic (from a milk jug?) for a custom fitted template.

In noodling around the internet about urethane coatings used on floors, there seem to be 3 alternate chemistries to choose from: moisture cured solvent based; oxygen cured water-born; and UV cured solvent based. I haven't read about anyone trying UV cured urethane but it's interesting. Flooring contractors say it cures immediately as they roll a portable UV light cart over the flooring. UV light sources are not all that expensive, either. Hmm... There's probably a downside, like the stuff costs $1,000 per gallon or something.

Dang! Nice score!

Nathan, I've had great service from Dick Nite and was glad to be a tester. I think his old topcoat was the best available anywhere in terms of results and I value the relationship he maintains with TU members. I really liked most of the attributes of the new DN. When cured, it seems just as hard and smoother than the old DN. I reported all the good results back to Dick and his reply prompted me to post them here on TU, which I was hesitant to do since it may not be the final new topcoat product. After that, somebody asked me to chuck the test blocks in water for an immersion test. I was dismayed at the result and feel whipsawed by the sequence of events. If I had a "Do-Over", I wouldn't post any comment about testing, pro or con because I felt the results are really for Dick alone to judge and act on. But having posted results of the scratch test, how could I not also post results of the immersion test?

Mike, looking at the online catalog descriptions, it doesn't seem they are different from the freshwater versions except for the saltwater trebles and maybe a few different saltwater paint patterns.

Mark, in discussing the "new DN" (we don't know yet if it will be selected by Dick), the main point I was trying to get across is that what you have UNDER the topcoat apparently has a lot to do with how it will perform. My concern is a crankbait painted with water based acrylics and topcoated with "new DN". A great crankbait the bass are crashing and you're fishing it all day, and it's getting war wounds - hook rash, scratches. Will you be able to fish it tomorrow or will you have to take the bait back to the barn and refinish the whole thing? If you give it to a friend or sell it, how happy are they going to be? Surely we can't expect fishermen to take precautions against exposing baits to water. Everyone has to judge these things for himself. I have reservations about the applicability of a timed water immersion test but it does point in a negative direction. How many of us are willing to give up durability? If there is a way to make new DN durable with particular coatings underneath it, what are they? My gut feeling is a big majority of TU members like the ease, low cost, and safety of water based acrylic paints. I'm unwilling to switch from epoxy or moisture cured urethane if it means I have to change everything else - unless the end product is a bait that is more durable.

Mark, I still use 5 min epoxy. Gorilla certainly should be strong enough but I'm also trying to build a backbone in the bait and I'm uncertain if Gorilla is best for that. I'm after something analogous to the polycarbonate insert that Bomber glues into some of their shallow balsa baits. I don't clamp the sides of the bait to get the thinnest possible glue margin between halves - I just lightly squeeze them together so there's a decently thick epoxy film remaining inside. To be honest, Gorilla glue sort of scares me! Black stuff bubbling out of the bait. Needing to dampen the halves before joining them.

A lot of build "technique" derives from circumstance - what wood, what hardware, what tools you have. When I started building cranks I bought a big box of balsa and discovered that "competition balsa" was not called that because it was good for crankbaits, but because it's a very light (and weak) balsa meant for building model airplanes. 6 or 8 lbs/cu ft density. I'm still kicking myself and I'm still building some cranks from that balsa by using multiple reinforcement to get a durable crankbait (split and epoxied body, epoxy undercoat, epoxy topcoat). Not something many commercial builders would want to put up with - but man, those cranks are lively I use them or give them to friends, who have no basis to gripe about how long a freebie lasts. In fact, they last as well as most commercial balsa cranks I've fished if they aren't abused by "weed slapping". I thru-wire from the line tie to the tail hanger only. The belly hanger is a one piece ballast/belly hanger epoxied into the bait. I've never had one pull out. Splitting a competition balsa body is about as easy as cutting bread - as long as you have a line to guide you when you split it. Just after you cut out the bait blank, use a compass to mark a center line nose to tail on the back and belly of the bait. Don't "erase" the line while shaping and sanding the body. Then work along the line with a single edge razor blade to split the body. Takes about a minute and it's surprisingly easy to be accurate if you never remove the blade from the wood while you're doing it. When you rejoin the halves and put in the belly ballast/hanger, it enjoys full epoxy linkage to the balsa surrounding it AND a connection to the whole body via the epoxy "backbone" you created when you epoxied the halves together. This works well for me but if I had harder balsa in the 14-18 lbs/cu ft range, I'd never bother with thru-wire and I'd never worry.

I've seen lots of custom balsa baits built without thru-wire construction. Some were fine, some fell apart. Where balsa baits usually fail is at the lip and it's usually a case of slapping the bait on the water to clear off weeds. Thru-wiring won't stop that. I think you have to consider the "whole package" and decide what's strong enough. How hard is the balsa? How long and strong are the eye screws? How thick and strong is the undercoating and the topcoating? If the ballast is epoxied in, how much glue surface area is there? I've never had a balsa bait pulled in half by a bass but thru-wiring does give a bait an extra dimension of longitudinal strength that is 'nice to have' if you don't mind the extra work. So to me, it's Player's Choice.

On plastic baits, a movable ballast system can have several functions. It shifts weight to the tail during the cast to improve distance and keep the bait from cartwheeling. When the bait lands and the retrieve begins, the weight shifts forward and down to the belly to stabilize the swim action. Lastly, the loose ballast provides a rattle and the small sideways shifts in weight may alter the swim action in a way the designer wants. Not many guys build wood baits with weight shifting ballast because it's hard to do. Wood baits have hardware that intrudes farther into the body than plastic ones and it gets in the way of large ballast chambers. And it's all too easy to get a ballast stuck when you glue the bait back together. Bottom line, try it - see how it casts and swims. The bass will certainly tell you how good a design it is.

Mark, I'd love to use a topcoat that's even better than solvent based moisture cured urethane (MCU). Maybe water-born oxygen cured urethane (OCU) like Target 9000/9300 or the candidate DN works well with a different paint system than I've tried, but there hasn't been much info here on TU about the paint system that has to be used under OCU to make a durable finish. Acrylic water based airbrush paint doesn't seem ideal. My test and posts by others, including you, tell me a crankbait painted with acrylics and topcoated with OCU has a problem - very limited protection against water infiltration. If the solution is "don't get it wet too long", or "don't let it get too scratched up", that's not gonna work for me on a bass crankbait or a crankbait used for trolling. Do I change all the coatings I use, maybe move to lacquer paint, and learn a new way to finish wood crankbaits so I can also use OCU? Not unless the end result will be slicker, look better, and be more durable. Not yet. Noodling around the internet, I read about many problems regarding OCU topcoats on automotive finishes. Some brands work fine, some don't, some users have worked out what other coatings to use with OCU, some haven't. It's a relatively new coating family generated principally by regulations from the EPA and California. 10-20 years from now, OCU may be developed to a point where we would never consider using anything else. But not yet.

Pic didn't upload, here's another try:

OK, here's the 6 hour water immersion pic. Block coated with Old DN on the left. Block with New DN on the right. Both blocks had undergone earlier scratch testing. No heat curing but should be at "final cure state" after 13+ days at 70 degrees, normal humidity. Since Tim Hughes reported good results in field testing a crankbait, I'm wondering at this point how our paint process differed. If he used lacquers, they probably have more natural water resistance than the acrylic water based Createx that I used.

Well guys, the New DN sample block failed after immersion for 6 hrs in cool well water. The New DN topcoat and Createx acrylic paint wrinkled and had begun to peel off as a unit from the white acrylic color basecoat. The Old DN block was perfectly intact, in comparison. You can read above about how the blocks were finished and what damage they both received in prior tests. Both blocks were moderately damaged, with the acrylic paint down to the acrylic white color basecoat exposed in some of the scratches. The results were starkly different from Hughsey's field test, so I'm wondering at this point what his paint process was. Lacquer paint? The DN still adhered to the Createx, but the Createx had separated from its color basecoat. It looks to me like water traveled into and along the Createx paint, causing it to expand and lift off. What does it all mean? I'm not sure! Hours of immersion are not typical for crankbaits but yeah, we'd all like a topcoat to be invulnerable to water, indefinitely. I'll add pics tomorrow.

Hey Killer, I understand where you're coming from. Lots of us have buttons that are more easily pushed than others. But I don't think your experience with an insufferable blowhard transfers - unless you're addressing the same blowhard. It's certainly true that no table of nominal wood density is gonna give you a number to plug into a ballasting formula for a crankbait. On the other hand, if you're sitting at your computer getting ready to order a batch of wood on the internet and don't have expert knowledge about different wood (that's me!), that table comes in awfully handy when it's time to choose the right wood. So when my box of basswood arrives from the vendor, can I expect it to have a density of 23 lbs/cu ft like in my table? Nope. Afraid not. Maybe mine was grown in a different climate, or came from a different part of the tree, or has more moisture than 7% standard from the table. But it does mean that, on average, I can expect basswood to be more buoyant than the oak I might have bought instead. And that's a big help. Can you take physics too far in talking about crankbaits? For me and obviously you, yes. It gives me a headache sometimes. I'm a practical crankbait builder and most of my ideas are experience + intuition, not science. Get an idea, build it, test it, change it if it doesn't work. That's the way I like to work. But if physics helps a guy design a crankbait and understand why something works and something else doesn't, what's to criticize? The craft and art of crankbait making has room for at least a few different approaches. Please please don't b.tchslap me, Killer.

LKN.. I still had my scratched up test blocks, so immersed them in water tonight and will report how they do after 24-48 hrs. Old versus New DN. I'm not especially impressed by this test because to me it doesn't represent how crankbaits are actually treated in the real world - unless you snag one and lose it! How long are crankbaits submerged under typical use? Repeatedly for short periods, not for 24-48 hrs straight. But you asked, so...

benton B, I also dipped a crankbait already topcoated with Devcon twice (5 hrs between dips) in New DN after sanding it to remove the epoxy gloss, and just hung it to dry. The New DN is fairly low viscosity, similar to fresh old formula DN, so the excess readily drips off the tail. As far as using a lure turner, that didn't occur to me because I never turn lures coated with Old DN. IMO, turning won't hurt and might give you a more even coating but I think the film thickness either way would probably not be noticeable to the naked eye and it might not make much difference in drying time. I didn't apply heat to the topcoat after application. Don't see why you couldn't do that but I didn't need to. I also presume you could speed curing if you put the lure in a warm environment for an extended period. Higher temps usually speed chemical processes. But I stuck with room temperature.

Dick emailed asking why he hadn't seen TU discussion on the topcoat. Guess he didn't see it buried in the KBS topcoat discussion, so thought it was time to start a new thread. He sent out test samples a few weeks ago and has not received results from many of the testers, perhaps because the new topcoat takes 12-14 days to fully cure and that has delayed responses. I don't know when the new product will be available, I'm just Joe Blow user like other guys on TU. I can't say if the end formulation will be the same as the sample I received. That's up to Dick, working with his own findings and those of various testers. With those caveats, I can make a few observations. The sample is a water-borne urethane, can be thinned with water and applied by brushing, spraying, or dipping. It cleans up with soap and water. It dries to the touch in about an hour and dries completely in about 4.5 hours, after which it begins an air-oxidizing cure that lasts 12-14 days. Suggested re-coat time is 5 hours for fastest development of final film properties. I don't know if New DN is similar to or different from Target Coatings water-borne urethanes, which have also been discussed here on TU. For my test, I cut 2 wood blocks 1"x1"x2". The blocks were undercoated with Devcon 2 Ton epoxy, sanded, sprayed with Polytranspar Superhide White as a color basecoat, sprayed with Createx fluorescent red paint, then dipped in topcoat and hung to dry at 70 deg F. I build crankbaits with the same process. One block was coated with Dick Nite original formula moisture-cure urethane as the "control sample" The second was coated with the new stuff. I did scratch testing on the blocks every day for 12 days, using the point of a drafting compass to scratch a "tic-tac-toe" pattern in the topcoat. Observations: The New DN is dead simple to apply. I didn't expect any drama with with coating incompatibility like you can get with a solvent based urethane and there was none. It has a milky color in the container and dries clear. Compared with Old DN, the New DN made the test block a couple of shades lighter in color. Not a lot, but noticeable. New DN has slightly less gloss. A single dip resulted in a very thin low gloss coating so I re-dipped it after 5 hours, which improved film thickness and gloss. When dried, the New DN seemed smoother and slicker than the old. Comparative Scratch testing: New DN scratched very easily after one day and up to day 4, was easier to scratch than Old DN. After that, it caught up to the Old DN. By day 6, I could not judge one better than the other. After 12 days, they still seem identical. Comments: New DN rates well in the things I tested. Easy to use, easier to store, more compatible with other coatings, looks good and performs well in scratch testing. Personally, I would probably dip 3 coats on a crankbait to reach the film thickness I like. Re-coating is easy and trouble free, but of course requires time if you wait the recommended 5 hours between coats. Also, if you are one of those impatient guys who paints a crankbait today and wants to fish it tomorrow, you are out of luck. I wouldn't fish one until the cure had gone for at least 5 days. Lastly, I didn't try New DN on the water in actual fishing conditions. So my test says nothing about adhesion, impact resistance or resistance to water infiltration. If these untested qualities are as good as those tested, it's a definite winner.

Ben, in my experience so far, adding lots of ballast to a balsa bait makes for similar in-water performance to the same bait made from a heavier substance and ballasted to the same total weight. Similar but not identical due to the difference in weight distribution. Similar enough that it seems fruitless to me to use labor-intensive build techniques just to get a deep diver made from balsa - if one design criteria is that it must weigh the same as a similar hardwood or plastic bait. I've made balsa deep divers that were DOA due to excessive ballasting. I've also seen deep divers from balsa that had livelier action than "normal" but I think their action resulted from a good balance of body and ballast weight (just like any other bait), not that the baits were built from balsa per se. Balsa allows you to experiment with ballast amount and placement more than you can with a heavier material. But in the practical world, if you get a bait "just right" in balsa, changing to another wood means starting from scratch. Why do some manufacturers build deep divers with balsa (Rapala DT16 and Sisson P20 come to mind)? Maybe for performance but also because their design, manufacturing, and raw material processes are set up to build balsa baits. That's no criticism of building balsa deep divers. If you're dedicated to balsa, you can design and build some great deep baits with it. Whether they will catch more fish than a hardwood or plastic deep diver is another question. Not only does a great bait have to swim well, it also has to cast efficiently and be durable. JMHO

Doc, it depends on whether you want to reproduce the shape only, or need to actually reproduce the lure in its original material. Molding works great if you want to copy a shape but the molded bait is rarely the same weight and buoyancy as a wood bait used to model it. That isn't necessarily a bad thing but you're unlikely to get a molded bait that performs like its wood model because the 2 bodies will have different weight distributions. If you want to copy a wood bait in wood, you have 2 choices: hand fashion a copy or use a wood duplicating system. Duplicators aren't cheap or simple. Unless you want to get into it as a hobby or business, you'll probably need to hire an expert with the equipment. If you measure carefully and have a knack and the patience for working wood, you can come quite close to reproducing a wood bait with simple tools. It's the low cost alternative but you are trading time/effort for money/equipment. It's a craft; Love it or leave it! Lastly, if you want to duplicate hollow plastic baits, all I can suggest is you visit a plastic molding factory to see how much it will cost you to do a few thousand. Don't forget copyright and patent laws unless you're doing it for personal use only.

Ben, I would pose an alternate scenario. Take your lure A and B and ballast them identically with just the amount of ballast needed to make the balsa bait swim properly. Which one will be livelier? The balsa bait. It's much more buoyant and you are only adding enough ballast to help it swim right. The maple bait will be over-ballasted, very sluggish, and will almost surely sink with the same ballast. I do think the center of gravity is a big factor, as is the total weight of the bait versus its water displacement (in other words, its buoyancy). Probably some other physics gobbledygook that I can't think of at 2 am (if ever) thrown in. Why can't you use woods that are more dense, ballast them more lightly (if at all), and end up with a lively crankbait that works as well as one of those balsa wonders? I think you can get great action with intermediate density hardwoods like cedar, basswood, etc (probably not maple though!). They can swim just as well and thump just as hard (maybe even harder) but you can't make a fast rising buoyant bait from them like you can with balsa, and the fast rise helps you get deflections and navigate the bait through heavy cover without snagging. Sometimes it's enough to know the effect even if you're too stupid to figure out all the causes.

Lake Fork flutter spoons are sold from 3 to 6". The 4" spoon is .8 oz, the 5" is 1.3 oz, to give you an idea of weights. What size works best depends on the forage size, like Ben notes. I tend to choose based on the spoon weight because I don't like to cast very heavy baits all day - so I usually stick to the 4".

You should use that one part fast drying stuff compatible with all other coatings that levels like a dream and cures to a rock hard, crystal clear waterproof and hookproof coating in 12 hours. The kind you can leave in the can on your bench indefinitely without it going bad, curing, or turning brown. You know, the one that costs $25 per quart. I used all mine up. When you find more, let me know.

IMO, there's no performance difference. Oval split ring were invented to cure problems created when the knot works its way under the wire of a round split ring. So if you're a klutz who can't tie a tight knot that doesn't sit in the gap of a round ring, ovals may have some utility. I've read where at least one custom builder warns against ovals because "they hurt the action of the bait". I don't believe that and don't go out of my way to use them or avoid them. I put round rings on baits - not least because oval rings sell at a premium price and I think that's ridiculous.

Did you undercoat the foam surface with something to prevent reaction between the DN and the chemicals in the foam? I usually undercoat wood baits with Devcon Two Ton epoxy thinned with denatured alcohol (any slow cure brushable epoxy will work just as well for this). When cured, epoxy becomes virtually inert and will not react with solvent coatings like DN. Another possibility that comes to mind is if you applied more than one coat of DN to the baits. If you did and the first coat of DN has not begun to cure yet (at least 24 hrs), the next coat can react with it and wrinkle the paint. You can also get wrinkling if you apply too much DN and then put the lure on a lure turner. The DN is prone to pool somewhere, typically the tail, and the thick DN layer skins over but still has liquid DN underneath which sloshes back and forth while the lure turns, wrinkling paint or causing bubbles. So there are various possibilities.