BobP

If I built rods for customers (God forbid!), I'd also quantify power to weight ratios like Mattman. There's lots of confusion when it comes to picking exactly the right rod for a particular fishing presentation. Any hard data is gold. Many guys have only a vague idea what they want or need because they've never used rods in the category they're buying into - that's why they're buying that rod in the first place. That's where good advice built on experience from a custom rod builder can help. But at the end of the day, it's the fisherman using the rod over years that determines whether the blank was right for the way he fishes, his expectations, his results and his personal likes-dislikes. Sensitivity is the main thing I shell out for when buying high end rods. You can infer blank sensitivity with numbers but it but it's real meaning is "how well I can detect subtle bites". There's no way to quantify that among different fishermen. Happily, there's plenty of room for debate when we mix and match laboratory measurements with living breathing humans, and then throw it all into a bass boat:).

Man, a dedicated, custom built paint room with air ventilation/filtration! Makes me want to kick the wife's car out of the garage and shoo out all the gnats, mosquitos, and crickets. But then I think.... what would all the lizards in the garage eat? And when the lizards expire, what would the snake visitors eat? It's a slippery slope.

I've been using a Revo SX for awhile with no problem but the level winds on many of the new very low profile reels open forward versus downward as is "traditional". Unfortunately, that means the unprotected level wind gears face toward the incoming line and any crap it's carrying during the retrieve. So I'd suspect grit or other contamination in the gears on that side. I'd send it back to Abu and let them sort it out, even if it's just to disassemble the reel and clean the level wind. Maybe they'll learn something if enough people do that.

I think most blanks, even in "natural" charcoal graphite are clearcoated. I built 5-6 rods using MB664 and MB705 Rogue blanks and they're my favorites. I didn't measure their deflection characteristics but have developed opinions about them based on 5 years of use. What I like - they typically have a softer tip section than other bass blanks. That makes them cast easier and more accurately for me, but they still have good power down the blank. 10 lb bass? No problem. Also, Rogue MB's are significantly lighter than other blanks in their price range and were lighter than most high end blanks available when I built them. For example, my Rogue MB705 weighs 3.91 oz. My very expensive St Croix 5C70MHF Legend Elite weighs 4.23 oz. They are built the same except the St Croix's has even lighter guides than the Rogue!. It's worth noting that Rogue MB's seem 1/2 to 1 power less than Rogue labels them, compared to similar blanks from other companies. For instance, the MB664 is termed MH, but seems closer to M power. IMO it's a great general purpose bass rod that does many presentations well. The MB705 is rated H power but is definitely a MH to me. It's a good rod for pitching jigs or Carolina rigs. I wouldn't choose a Rogue MB for a frog rod or a flipping stick due to the softer tip section but when you don't need a broomstick, a Rogue is a good choice. As far as sensitivity goes, I can't argue a Rogue MB vs a St Croix LE in terms of lab measurements. But will opine that a Rogue built with good components, well balanced and lined with fluorocarbon is plenty sensitive enough for any touchy-feely presentation like worms and jigs. Yes, the St Croix LE may be slightly more sensitive built exactly the same way, but it's also WAY more expensive.

KingFisher, SMALLIEHUNTER, only true airbrush junkies buy that stuff! Or maybe a guy who paints bikes and helmets for $$ and has chrome paint left over? I can't see it - my hand would be shaking too hard to hold my Iwata:lol:

Many of us paint with water based paints so waterproofing does double duty - it adds a layer of protection against water infiltration (which water based paints don't) and as importantly, it prevents the wood grain from rising when hit with water based paint. With enamel, you don't have the latter problem so if you are satisfied with the durability of the enamel and clearcoat you use, I don't necessarily see any reason to change. If you'd like to add a waterproofer, I'd suggest Devcon Two Ton epoxy diluted to a thin consistency (as much as 50/50) with acetone or virgin lacquer thinner. When dry and cured, D2T is pretty inert and will rarely react with solvent based paints. Using other solvent based waterproofers and then painting with enamel is a crap shoot. It may work, or the enamel may react with chemicals in the waterproofer and wrinkle. I can't guarantee no problems with D2T but think it's your best chance.

KingFisher, Gaaak! $80+ for a 4 oz aerosol can of chrome paint! I've heard lure manufacturers use electro deposition to chrome baits - guess it's basically the same process used to chrome bumpers. John, this question comes up regularly and the consensus is it's a choice between very expensive paint or foil. Most of us go with foil. Some foils give you a very reflective chrome effect and you can spray over the foil with transparent colors to get different hues. Foil is also nice because you can texture it to mimic scales. Mylar foil is the most reflective, approximating actual chrome. But you have to glue it down and it can be hard to get it on a lure without wrinkles. The easiest foil that I've found is BriteBak adhesive silver foil sold for stained glass art. A 2" wide 50 ft roll is around $10 and does a bunch of lures. And the peel and stick feature makes foiling a lot easier and neater.

IMO, try using silver BriteBak foil tape designed for stained glass art. Foil tape is the easiest way to foil and BriteBak is the best foil tape. You can use any foil from candy wrappers to cigarette packages to mylar space blankets for foiling. The problem is gluing it on the lure without wrinkles and texturing it. BriteBak solves those problems and is quick and easy to use.

To add to 68KingFisher's comments, it takes experience to get airbrush paint to do what you want. Be patient. Start with simple patterns and work your way up. For painting details, I suggest using stencils. Do a search on the subject for good ideas. Hundreds of threads on TU concern finishing crankbaits. The search feature is your key to unlocking that info. For repainting a plastic or wood crankbait, lightly sand it with 400 grit to improve adhesion and to remove any bad finish. Wipe it down with denatured alcohol. Shoot a color basecoat of white paint, then the colors. Start from the bottom and work up. Note: If repainting a wood bait, you never want to sand past the existing finish and into raw wood. That causes 2 problems - you will be left with soft wood and hard finish side by side, and it is impossible to sand that even. Second, you will have removed the waterproofing from the wood and now must waterproof that area (or the whole bait) to keep your water based airbrush paint from raising the wood grain. If you have gouges or deep scratches in a bait, fix them with wood filler.

Once epoxy has cured it is very resistant to solvents or other chemicals, so you should be OK.

Maybe someone can explain this to me! JMHO, I feel I can make a bait that is just as strong, with segment gaps as exactly spaced, and which can never separate, by using simple double screw eyes for the hinge parts. I hand twist the screw eye hinges out of stainless wire to tailor their eye size and length to the particular bait. I understand why commercial factories use the hinge pin system on swimbaits. It's certainly the easiest and maybe the only reliable system for mass manufacturing segmented hollow plastic bodies. But I think just the opposite is true for custom hand made baits made from solid wood or foam plastic. What am I missing?

Nothing will wipe fingerprints off acrylic latex airbrush paint without removing the paint. Denatured alcohol is grain alcohol with an additive to make it undrinkable. Isopropyl is a different alcohol. Limit hand contact with the paint before you epoxy but you don't need to maintain "operating room conditions". Devcon is pretty forgiving about coating over the occasional fingerprint, especially if you brush on a nice even coat and have not added any solvent to the epoxy to thin it.

I clear clogs like Mark. Acetone works very well. The only down side is it causes the needle packing to swell slightly and grab the needle as the trigger is worked fore and aft. Run some water through the brush afterward and that disappears pretty quickly. If I bend a needle, I try to straighten it out by gently pressing it against a flat surface. You're probably not going to get it back to perfect but you can get it straight enough to work while you wait for a replacement to arrive. Do it a couple of times and you'll be LOTS more careful with them. Split a nozzle on an Iwata and you'll become REALLY REALLY careful with them! ($40+ for a nozzle)

I use it as a color basecoat. It's designed for that application, adheres well and is highly pigmented (meaning it takes less of it to cover other colors). It is harder than normal acrylic airbrush paint. When refinishing cranks, I scuff existing finish with 400 grit and then spray the Superhide. On unpainted plastic, I just wash the bait or wipe it down with denatured alcohol to remove dirt/grease from the surface. Instead of sanding, some guys report good results using aerosol Bulldog adhesion promoter.

IMO you should heat set all brands of acrylic paint. I began doing it to speed paint drying so I could shoot the next color faster but it also apparently makes the paint a bit more durable when hit with solvent based clear coats like DN. I don't go crazy with the hair dryer but do like to get it nice and dry. Too much, too fast and you can push wet paint around on the lure where you don't want it or cause the air in a wood bait to expand and break through the lure waterproofing to cause a blemish. DN has a pretty volatile solvent that flashes off fast. I have no idea whether Future floor polish would offer any protection but if you understand why the wrinkling happens it's not hard to avoid. In my experience, wrinkles happen if the DN is thick enough anywhere on the bait to form a skin with still-liquid DN trapped underneath. It can happen even if you apply a nice even coating because DN has a very thin consistency and tends to run. Wrinkling used to happen to me occasionally when I dipped in DN and put baits on a lure turner. Although the baits were rotating, the shape of the bait or the axis of rotation allowed the DN to collect in some spots. Now I dip baits in DN and just hang them up to dry. The DN drips off the tail quickly enough that the problem doesn't arise. So the fix for me was a "two-fer". Fixed the problem and made clear coating with DN easier than before. I don't spray DN so maybe some TUer who does can comment on avoiding wrinkles in that regimen.

Mark, I've used a Sharpie and it works well, but only if the clearcoat does not contain solvent that will dissolve Sharpie dye. I have used brushes and Q-tips to apply details and that works too if you get the right applicator and have a steady hand.

They may have used propionate way back when......but I guarantee they use a more modern polymer coating now.

Tracy's Stained Glass Workshop - BriteBak Silver Tape The easiest way to foil lures is with tape, and the best tape I've found is Brite-Bak silver tape made for stained glass art. It's thin, adheres well and can be shaped to the bait much easier than thick aluminum duct tape (and it's more reflective). Around $10 a roll. When you say iridescent, that's different from reflective which is what foil will give you. Iridescence is done with iridescent paints from any of the many acrylic paint companies. If you want iridescent paint to really 'pop' shoot it over foil.

Paint the bait pearl white. Spray the shoulders medium to light gray. Then do the blue back. Then put a chartreuse stripe just over the bottom edge of gray paint. If you get it on the blue, blue + yellow = green (you probably don't want that). Lastly, shoot some pearl chrome over the whole bait, going a little heavier around the head to make it darker. The pearl chrome tones down the other colors, unifies the whole scheme and gives the bait an iridescent finish. It turns the chartreuse to iridescent gold. The pearl chrome is a Smith Wildlife color from taxidermy.com.

Bloxygen is a mix of nitrogen and argon, so perhaps welding gas will work. I don't know how substituting CO2 for N will affect the protection offered, but I think any dry gas will have a beneficial effect.

Bloxygen helps a lot. It isn't "proof" against all moisture contamination but I've stored and used DN in a dipping jar for as long as 8 months without problems. As the DN level in the dipping jar gets lower and more air is stored in the jar, Bloxygen prevents it from contacting the surface of the DN. Just a short squirt of gas is sufficient to do the job. My only gripe is that it's sort of expensive.

I don't mold crankbaits myself but there have been a number of threads here about molding baits with Alumite and 16 lb foam. Use the SEARCH feature to find them. There may also be a tutorial on it if you go to the Forum page, Member Submitted Tutorials, Hardbaits. Change the time limit on the bottom of the list to "From the Beginning" to display the most entries. http://www.tackleunderground.com/forum/hardbait-how/11916-slip-molds-hard-baits.html

Duh! I didn't read the original post correctly and thought we were talking ONLY epoxy. Personally, I think the perfect crankbait finish is harder, thinner, and more scratch resistant than any epoxy I've seen so far. I still use epoxy because I can reliably produce a pretty finish with it that is reasonably durable. Adding urethanes to the mix, maybe we now open the door to DIPPING. It certainly yields a more uniform finish and it's QUICK. But I'm doubtful of finding a urethane that's really tough but doesn't require an activator to make it so (which pretty much puts the kabosh on dipping). The mositure cured polyurethanes I've used work well but sure are touchy about moisture contamination, which is a pain for hobby users. Plus, the environmental parameters for getting a great finish with them may be more stringent than we have recognized. Since the humidity and temperature have increased in my garage, it has been more difficult for me to get moisture cured poly to dry out without fish eyes, which was never a problem for me in cooler seasons. The increased temps causing problems is pure conjecture on my part, of course.

I squeeze two pools of hardener/resin, each a little bigger than a nickel into a small mixing container (in my case, a baby food jar lid) lined with tin foil. If the mixed epoxy seems too thick, I blend in 3-4 drops of denatured alcohol or lacquer thinner. That's plenty. The solvent makes a thinner coating and extends the brushing time a little. Solvent will also extend the time it takes for the epoxy to cure. Denatured alcohol seems to extend brushing time the most and affects cure time the least, so it's what I use most often. It's worth noting that if you also use epoxy thinned with solvent to undercoat bare wood, you can dilute the epoxy up to 50% with good results. However, for undercoating, lacquer thinner is a better solvent to use since denatured alcohol will raise wood grain.

I use a very small 1 mm drill bit chucked in a Dremel tool to clean paint out of hook eyes. Works pretty good. As far as powder vs vinyl, I can only say that, as a user, I like powder because it's more durable. A fluid bed would be a big help in getting the powder paint applied uniformly.