BobP

If you think of hunting in terms of degrees of divergence to both sides from a base course, most of the good hunters I've seen have 10-15 degrees of divergence. Enough to be noticeable but not over-do it. You still want to be able to guide the crankbait through (and into) cover to get deflections.

Rayburn Guy, that's an interesting website, thanks. I basically agree with Stringjam about "hunting". If you fish a shallow crankbait properly and it's hitting lots of cover, hunting becomes a non-issue. Guys hear about hunting crankbaits being in some way magical but many don't recognize hunting when they see it, and some confuse it with a screwed up, poorly running or badly tuned crankbait. And in a sense, I think they're right! I think you build hunters by designing the bait to be near (but not over) the edge of instability. And there's no general rule on exactly how to do that - it depends on the specific bait design. No doubt, the guys who built tens of thousands of square lipped shallow Bagley balsa baits know how to make that design hunt and can describe how they did it. Does that translate to all other shallow baits? I don't think so. But if you are building shallow round baits with square Lexan lips, you can get some good direction from the website articles that Rayburn Guy cited. The problem you run into with this is that when you push the stability envelope, it's always gonna push back. You're going to build a certain percentage of baits that surpass the limits and are worthless. Another percentage will run OK but will never hunt. I build a variety of bait types as a hobby and the total numbers are small. I know I can build a shallow round square lip bait that has lively action and catches fish. I prefer not to have a percentage of them that have to go directly from the workbench to the trashcan. JMHO.

Unless your finish is sheeting off the lure leaving clean brass, it isn't a problem caused just by not sanding. There are various possibilities but most often, the problem is that your top coat is not durable and waterproof enough to withstand fishing abuse. I've never used nylon paint or Flash Seal so can't say judge compatibility or durability. I lightly sand brass spoons, shoot them with water based acrylic paints, then dip them in a solvent based moisture-cured polyurethane (in my case, Dick Nite, which is designed for spoons). The top coat soaks into and through the acrylic paint to bond with the brass, making a durable finish. Unfortunately, you just can't mix and match solvent based coatings. If their solvents are not compatible, or if the solvent in one layer is not completely evaporated before applying another coating, the paint will bubble and wrinkle, or fail to adhere. The solution is either to use coatings that have been tested by others and found to work (as above) or try coatings designed and sold as a compatible "family" by one manufacturer. If your nylon paint manufacturer also sells a compatible waterproof top coat, you might try it.

X2 what RayburnGuy says.

KF, this is really interesting stuff about airbrushes, especially the article on needles and how to polish them. Thanks!

Lure making as a profession is business. You have to be a good businessman first and foremost. Sure, you have to make really good lures that catch fish, appeal to fishermen, and are a little different from all the other lures in the marketplace. Then your lures need to become well known and sought after. You have to know how to package and market them. Then you have to work really hard to produce/sell enough lures to cover your costs and make a profit - all while maintaining the quality that made you famous in the first place. Quite a few custom builders sell lures and make a profit. Most of them aren't giving up their day jobs, however. Many builders love doing it as a hobby. But don't delude yourself that lure building as a business is the same thing. You have customers, schedules, orders, expenses, production problems etc that have to be addressed daily. Like a lot of businesses, it can be a question of who you know, not just what you know. If I were 20 yrs old and wanted to get into the business, I'd get a job with Strike King, Norman, Rapala, Lucky Craft USA, or a similar company to learn what it's about and make contacts. If you still love it after 5 years, consider where you want to go in the industry.

I dip baits in Dick Nite moisture cured polyurethane to topcoat them. Dip it, hang it up, done. Do a search on Dick Nite or DN to find out how to buy it, store it, and use it.

You can buy pressure regulators with dial indicators and moisture traps at Home Depot for reasonable prices. They also carry hose size adapters to put everything together.

I most often use Devcon Two Ton epoxy thinned with some denatured alcohol so that it soaks into the wood. I sometimes use multiple dips of propionate (aka prop) dissolved in acetone.

Check lurepartsonline.com. They have a few cigar shaped basswood bodies.

JD, If you see an airbrush compressor advertised at 30 psi, that's the max it will develop when the airbrush isn't operating. Press the trigger to get air flow and the "max" psi becomes about 15 psi, which is the "working" psi. The working psi on airbrush compressors is usually about 15 psi lower than the max advertised psi. IMO, you can do some painting with 15 psi but you definitely want a compressor that will develop at least 35 psi working psi. I think of one advertised as 50 psi is marginally adequate. You also get some minor air pulsing with many small airbrush compressors, which is not ideal for paint control. I think a survey of TU painters would probably suggest that the best value is a regular tool compressor that includes an air tank of 2-5 gallons. Attach a water trap and a pressure control with gauge to it (They often include one) and use it as you would any other airbrush compressor. The compressor will develop 100 psi, stored in its tank, and the regulator will reduce the psi to whatever level you want for painting. The compressor will turn on occasionally, depending on the size of the tank, but you will be painting in silence most of the time. This is probably the ideal setup if noise is not issue and you can find tool compressors for $59 and up. The table top airbrush compressors are not exactly silent either. I couldn't run one inside my house without my wife complaining.

Frank, mine said Japan but what do I know? I bought a Japanese domestic market Shimano reel a couple of years ago and Malaysia was stamped on the reel foot. The reel works great. When all is said and done, you're buying the engineering and quality control of a particular company, not the nation of Japan. I trust Iwata so am not concerned about where they build it, just so they build it to the usual Iwata standards. Lots of companies noted for high quality products have moved manufacturing to Malaysia and Thailand, or contract with companies there to build products for them. The Abu Garcia Revo line of reels is another recent example.

I haven't seen any comparisons of Master a/b's to other brands here on TU but if you Google the brand, you can find other sites with strong opinions pro and con. You have to draw your own conclusions. My take from what I read is that some guys have had good service from them while others criticize the durability and quality. Maybe that is just guys running down a bargain brand by comparing to a brand that costs 3X as much. You do get what you pay for in airbrushes and you can't expect a Chinese copy of an Japanese Iwata HP to have the same quality. Whether it's a rational choice depends on your budget and the likelihood that the one delivered to your door works to your satisfaction.

Drill holes in the belly and epoxy in lead weight(s). Before you do that, do a float test. Fit the trebles on the lure. Hang lead weight (solder, lead wire, bullet weights - whatever you want to use for the ballast) on the front treble until you get the float attitude you want and the lure begins to sink. That's the amount of lead you need in the body for the lure to sink in that temperature water. A lure that's just heavy enough to sink in warm water will suspend in cold, more dense, water. So you want to tailor the temp of the test water to the water in which the lure will be fished. Alternatively, many guys ballast them to suspend or sink in the warmest water they will fish. In colder water, they add adhesive lead tape to the belly to get the same action, or install heavier treble hooks. You can always make a jerkbait heavier the day you fish it, but it's not easy to make it lighter!

CB, Home Depot and Lowes carries air tool hose adapters, moisture traps, and pressure regulators.

The back handle is heavy chromed steel or brass and I doubt it would work unless you're a machinist with the right equipment. After you had a cutout on both sides of the handle, you'd also need a hole in the rear through which to remove the needle. It might be easier to find the problem with the threads and fix it. Unless you damaged the threads inside the body, the most likely problem would be somewhere on the exposed threads on the handle. Sometimes you can file down a bad thread with a diamond file. Alternative - a new handle costs $15 from Coast Airbrush.

I trace the outline of the wire form with a Sharpie pen on one side and then groove it with a pointed Dremel cutting bit. Put a little paint on the wire frame and press the halves together to show you where you need to remove material from the other half. If you plan to do a large number of identical baits, it's easier to build a nail form to guide how you bend the wire frames and a template to indicate where the interior surfaces of the bait need to be grooved.

A couple of comments about contrast - designers simplify bass behavior to make some sense out of what makes fish bite. The current dogma is "feeding bite" versus "reaction bite". A feeding bite lure is as naturalistic as possible (usually implying less contrast), hoping the bass will bite because it closely resembles what they are actively feeding on. A reaction bite lure is as contrasty and visible as possible, hoping it will trip the reaction bite urge from a neutral or negative fish. This probably over-simplifies nature but is useful for crankbait design simply because it seems to work. Looking at crankbaits used by pro tournament fishermen is interesting. Whatever you think about tournament fishing, those guys fish A BUNCH to make a living and get very sophisticated about crankbait design, including color and contrast. Strike King produces crankbaits in the Sexy Shad pattern. In the last several years, they have come out with 5 or 6 different Sexy Shad patterns tweaked by Kevin Van Dam, and the amount of contrast in the basic Sexy Shad pattern is the variable. It seems to me that most of the variants I've seen are moving toward less contrast than the original Sexy Shad, including one that is translucent. I'm not trying to make a point here, it's just an interesting phenomenon. If I had to guess, I'd say Strike King and KVD are producing variants to look for more feeding bites, which undoubtedly fill a livewell faster than reaction bites. I fish a reservoir that's clear by southern standards (5-7 ft visibility) and doesn't have much grass. I catch more bass there with naturalistic patterns like the foil/gray back example below. But when I go to Canada and fish lakes with lots of grass, lures with maximum contrast like the Firetiger example catch more fish for me. I deduce that high contrast patterns do best when fished around grass where bass have limited visibility. Maybe I'm missing a design factor, maybe I'm misinterpreting nature, I don't know. But it works for me to catch bass and have fun.

One warning about Iwatas - be careful with the needle and nozzle. The smaller tipped Iwata's are hand tuned at the factory for atomization and pattern. If you bend a needle or split a nozzle, there's really no way to get back to factory perfection.

I think there are unlimited directions one can take in designing crankbaits and all are right if they catch fish. It certainly sounds as if you have found a design mix that works great in the specific water and fishing circumstances that you design your baits for. I think most of us try do the same. Here in the south, there is probably less variety in prey species (especially forage fish) than in northern waters, and the water tends to be more stained. Largemouth dominate and are preferentially targeted. Logically, most crankbaits are designed to catch largemouth in stained water environments. Color pattern is about approximating one of the three main southern prey species: Threadfin shad, crawfish, and sunfish. Contrast, reflectivity and naturalistic colors are not insignificant but are not emphasized over other attributes like dive depth, size, shape, and bait action. Then, you have to overlay practical crankbait mechanics over the attraction elements if you want a good bait. It has to cast well to the distances it will be fished. It has to come through the cover through which it will be retrieved, it has to hook bass well, and it should be durable enough to survive fishing abuse. That's quite a list of design elements and a lot of choices to make. Personally, I don't sell crankbaits so have no compunction whatever in copying or borrowing design features from very popular and successful commercial baits. But even if I could really "clone" a commercial bait (I can't, and don't believe anyone else can either), I'm always tinkering to get a bait that emphasizes the design characteristics I think are most important in the water I fish and my style of fishing.

I use epoxy to join the halves of baits I split for thru-wire frames. It lets you to insert the hardware and ballast inside the body so that there are no holes to patch when the halves are joined. In your instance, I'd use a little hot glue to join the halves temporarily while I cut the lip slot (do this first!) and shape/sand the bait.

Do a search on the word "duplicator" and you'll find quite a few posts on them. Oh, btw..... bring money!

I think Keysd13 is talking about store-bought lips, not sheets of G-10. Yep, Micarta is circuit board, aka garolite, also referred to by technical spec names like G-10, G11, and FR4.

I remember your first post - I Googled the first time and got zero results. Fabulon - Min Wax polyurethane for bowling alleys and other high traffic floor areas. Sound intriguing BUT it's not clear to me how water resistant it is since it's designed for interior floors. Good enough for baits? I don't know and haven't read about any TU'ers using it. So far, there seem to be 3 clear coat finishes that are widely accepted as "the right stuff" for baits: epoxy, moisture cured polyurethane, and high solids 2 part auto clears.

I tried one. Chose the ballast I wanted, screwed in the plug and finished the bait as usual, so the plug became permanent. They are fairly large, heavy baits. I suggest you take it to the lake and try it before you decide which ballast to use. I gave mine away so can't help on running depths or action.