BobP

Bryan, a white color basecoat goes a lot faster if you use paint designed for it, i.e., a highly pigmented "cover white". I used plain cheap Apple Barrel white for several years and it worked fine shot through a large tip Badger airbrush. But the large pigment particle size gave the surface a texture like pebbles after drying. A couple of years ago, I switched to Polytranspar Super Hide White, which shoots easier (it's formulated for airbrushing while Apple Barrel is not), covers quickly with lots of pigment, and dries fast to a hard smooth white finish. It's the best "cover white" acrylic I've found.

You might try something like this: http://www.identi-tape.com/deco-holo.html

I paint the bait, install the lip, then clearcoat after the lip epoxy has hardened. If I dip clear the bait, I get a little Dick Nite on the lip - no problem IMO. I use a piece of stainless wire to totally fill the lip slot with Devcon Two Ton and then insert the dry (no epoxy) lip into the slot. Wipe off the epoxy that squeezes out the back of the slot. If I put epoxy on the lip before insertion, it usually pushes out onto the lip surface and makes a mess. I cut the slot to hold the lip with minimal slop but you don't want a tight fit because that wipes off all the epoxy when the lip is installed. Epoxy has an optimum film thickness for best strength when bonding two surfaces. It's not a lot, but it isn't zero!

Red cedar is a little more dense than white cedar. I hear it contains quite a bit of red oil that can leach through finishes unless sealed with the proper undercoating (unknown to me).

I'm betting that was done with water slide decal paper and a color ink jet printer.

I only use tape on the lip before painting. On a bait body, it makes for straight lines with no color transition, which like RG says, looks very unnatural. If you use specifically Devcon Two Ton epoxy for topcoating, you CAN manually rotate your bait to prevent the epoxy from sagging. I did this a few times before I decided I liked bait making and built a lure turner to make life easier. Put a wire hanger in the line tie and the tail and just switch the bait heads/tails every little while for 30-40 minutes until the Devcon has hardened enough not to sag. It's right up there with "watching paint dry" but it does work.

If you're going to shoot pearl and flake paints that are thicker or have larger particles, I think an airbrush with a .3 to .35mm tip is a good "one brush only" choice. There are lots of good brushes available with this tip size. I use and like an Iwata Revolution BR and it is value priced at around $70. You could also choose a brush like a Badger 150 or Paasche VL that comes with multiple tips. When I used Paasche and Badger brushes, I never used the larger tips and so eventually migrated to airbrushes from Iwata. I use a .3mm tip brush for color basecoating and flakes. I switch to a .2mm tip Iwata for shading and details. There is really no answer that is right for everyone. Best tip size depends on how you individually work with an airbrush, how well you learn to control it. You can only find that out by using one.

Personally, if I had a couple of Badgers I'd prefer my 3rd brush to be something with a .2mm tip, like an Iwata HP-B. I shoot everything except flake paints and some thick basecoats through mine, unthinned. So don't think .2mm is so tiny that it's only for fine work. A .3 or .35mm brush is a great choice if you are only going to have one brush for everything - but that is not your situation. JMHO

I'd check out coastairbrush.com, dixieart.com and taxidermy.net/suppliers. Be aware that the shipping cost can vary considerably depending on the size of your order. If you want to buy locally, Createx is the standard brand of paint carried by most craft stores including Michaels, Hobby Lobby, etc. My feeling is that airbrush paint lasts a long time when painting crankbaits, so I'm more worried about getting the colors I want in large enough sizes, than I am about price. Think about getting a few colors like white, pearl white, black, red, bright green, and neon yellow in 4 oz bottles versus the 2oz size I see stocked in most shops. If you want to try some non-Createx specialized colors, check out taxidermy.net. One of their suppliers, WASCO, carries some nice paints that are designed for fish art. I also love the Polytranspar Super Hide White from WASCO for color basecoating baits before adding colors. It is the best at hiding wood grain or underlying paint that I have found and it dries to a hard smooth surface very quickly. I buy that stuff by the pint!

Fishhunter, it's interesting to hear about some of the processes and materials used in factory production crankbaits. Thanks!

I agee with Luke. I know guys have stripped baits with fingernail polish remover but it was a pain in the butt and very messy when I tried it. When I MUST strip the finish off a plastic lure, I can sometimes peel it off with a sharp thin blade knife (notice I say peel and not scrape). If there is no critical weight issue (like with a small suspending jerkbait), you don't need to remove the old finish, just sand it lightly so your new finish will adhere well. You can sand all the finish off with 220 and 400 grit paper but you will lose any small 3d features if there are any. The ideal method is a blast booth and the right abrasive media.

There are guys who brush multiple coats of DN and guys who dip lures in it (including me) but I don't know anyone who regularly sprays it. Maybe someone who does will pipe up. How any method works depends on on the type of joint, whether it can be cleaned after topcoating, and whether they are assembled before topcoating. Brushing probably offers the best chance of topcoating without getting DN in the joint. I know some guys have tried spraying DN thinned with solvent, but don't know the particulars.

Sure, anything will work. I use a cheap battery powered Digiweigh scale. Measures up to 8 oz in tenths of grams or hundredths of ounces and its plastic cover can be used as a larger tray if you have lots of small parts to weigh or something too large to fit on the scale's weighing pad. Turn it on, wait a second for it to zero itself and weigh away.

You have to weigh the ballast with a digital scale or use integrated belly hangers/ballasts of known weight. Drill the hole and epoxy them in. A digital scale can be purchased online for around $25 and it's one of the indispensable tools of bait building IMO. I don't weigh just ballast - I weigh everything that goes into a bait. It allows me to clone a bait that works well (if you keep notes like you should!) and I can build a bait to within a couple of hundredths of an ounce of a final target weight when doing a new design.

JMHO, you may not be happy topcoating with epoxy because it is pretty thick stuff. IMO, it looks good and performs well on wood baits and many of the guys who use it have designed their baits around it as a topcoat. But IMO, it's less ideal on plastic baits if you want a "factory look" thin topcoat. Dick Nite is a better choice in that case if you are looking for something that's very durable and high gloss. If you are just "test painting" baits and don't need them to stand up to hard field use, many exterior grade polyurethanes would work.

Dope isn't epoxy, it is a cellulose based coating containing acids and blend of solvents. Not durable enough and its acids probably caused your paint to wrinkle. When you layer solvent based coatings on a bait, you have to be careful that all of them are compatible or you get wrinkling and peeling as their solvents interact. One way to avoid problems is to use a single brand of coatings that are produced as a compatible "family". It's hard to find families designed for durability except in automotive finishes which tend to be pricey (not to mention toxic). An easier way is to avoid solvent based coatings altogether. Try this: Brush on a 2 part epoxy undercoat on the bare sanded wood (you can thin it with lacquer thinner to make it penetrate the wood fibers). Let it cure 24 hours then sand it lightly shoot a white acrylic latex color basecoat and dry it with a hair dryer shoot your colors drying each with the hair dryer Brush on a 2 part epoxy topcoat to make it durable and waterproof. Rotate the bait until the epoxy hardens enough not to sag. When your Dick Nite arrives, use it instead of the epoxy topcoat.

One or two coats of Etex will work fine on a DT-14. Even a single thicker coat of Devcon 2 Ton should be OK on this size Rapala.

Homer, there are a couple of considerations. If you are breaking the epoxy seal around the line tie on a wood bait's nose, you might try using soft temper stainless steel wire for your line tie to avoid that. I use soft temper .040" dia. ss "safety wire" for this and it works great.. Get it from mcmaster.com Similar size soft temper brass wire also works. Both make the crankbait easier to tune. I use the same wire for in-the-lip Lexan lips because it's easier to shape manually than hard stainless wire. There are various styles for in-the-lip line ties and this is just mine: Use a piece of soft stainless wire 2.5 times as long as the distance from your line tie hole to the back end of the lip. Bend the wire in half over a drill bit clamped in a vise. The bit should be the size you want for the inside diameter of the line tie eye. Clamp the loose ends of the wire in Vise Grip pliers and twist the wire until you get something that looks like a screw eye (hey, it IS a screw eye!). Bend the screw eye just below the eye at a right angle (leave 1/16" of the shank below the eye to pass through 1/16" thick Lexan). Drill a single hole in the lip, just large enough for a friction fit. I drill them a little small and use the screw eye itself to auger out the hole until I can push it through. Pull the right angle wire through the hold with needle nose pliers. The shank of the screw eye should now lay flat along the bottom of the lip with minimal gap. You can glue the assembly "as is" into the bait but I like one more step to make the lip into a stiffer integrated "package" - cut a little slot at the center rear of the Lexan lip and, maintaining tension on the wire, bend it up over the top of the lip, then crimp it down and trim the wire so about 1/8" is left. When cutting the lip slot, remember you have to drill out cavities at the top and bottom center of the slot to accommodate the wire. It's better to make the center cavities a little too large and too wide so you can adjust the lip position in the slot to "perfect". With 1/16" Lexan, I find that a 1/8" drill bit in a Dremel is just the right size to drill the upper and lower cavity in one shot. If you try this lip method with hard stainless steel wire, it will be difficult to do do the bends accurately with hand tools.

Lurehead, I put a tough undercoat on every wood bait, not just on balsa. Any crankbait wood species will do the same thing. Maybe I'm not as religious as Dean about heat setting to crosslink acrylic paint. I hit every paint shot with a hair dryer so I don't have to wait between colors and so I can see what it will look like when dry. I don't blast them with lots of heat for extended periods - certainly not the high heat recommended to set Createx paint into T-shirts. But it is enough to cause bubbles under the paint on wood - unless prevented. Everyone develops a build routine based on his own experience of "what works". If you don't want to speed dry or heat set paint and are happy with your end product, no worries. I just believe a tough undercoat and heat drying paint make for a more durable crankbait that looks better too. If I were production building 100 a day, I'd sure find another way to do things - but fortunately I'm not!

You can thin epoxy with just about any solvent - denatured alcohol, lacquer thinner, acetone, etc. I use denatured alcohol or lacquer thinner because they evaporate slower. Etex already contains solvent and most guys use multiple coats of it to get acceptable coverage, so I'm skeptical - not from the standpoint of "can you thin it" (you can) but from the standpoint of "will it cover and protect adequately". I coat most of my baits with Dick Nite moisture cured polyurethane and it is durable, glossy and THIN. You might want to consider it if a thin topcoat is critical.

Your explanation is a good as any! There are many logical explanations on how lip size, shape, angle, and line tie position work. All of them make sense to me but my gut tells me that how a specific body interacts with a specific lip is more hydro-dynamically complicated than most of us recognize. If there is a supercomputer algorithm that can design perfect lips for a given body, bring it on! But I won't be holding my breath in the meantime. I rely on the products of thousands of other successful bait makers for examples of how I want my bait to perform - and copy the snot out of them!

Lurehead, the trick with balsa is to have a durable waterproof undercoating on the bait before you start painting. No air can then escape from the bait when heat drying the paint. I use epoxy or multiple coats of propionate. That makes for a nice smooth bait surface - and it's more durable too.

Geppa, very nice scale effect! Kudos.

One thing that works well is elastic thread. Buy it at Walmart or a store that carries sewing stuff. Wrap it a couple of times, knot it tight, then cut it off with a razor blade when finished wrapping.

The problem is how to remove the goof without also removing the underlying rod finish. If it isn't too far off the wraps, I'd probably epoxy over it But if you want to try taking it off, I'd suggest either naphtha or denatured alcohol. They are less volatile solvents and so less liable to screw up the blank.