BobP

I’ve used Devcon for Many years. Yes, it may be slightly more forgiving of volume measurement than some others but if you want the best hardness, most clarity, slowest yellowing, and fewest epoxy disasters, why not use syringes to measure it? There are lots of ways to screw up a finish and after all the steps involved in getting to the topcoat stage, it’s particularly galling to screw that up and ruin a bunch of baits. to be honest, epoxy is not my first choice for topcoating metal baits. I prefer moisture cured urethane like KBS or Dick Nite.

I think a “10 minute” epoxy would still be a “quick cure” formula with all the bad features of a 5 minute epoxy. What you want is a slow cure 20 or 30 minute epoxy designed for glue/craft applications, or a decoupage/table top epoxy that cures even more slowly. My standard glue epoxy is Devcon Two Ton 30 minute. Among the decoupage epoxies, Envirotex Lite (aka Etex) is the most popular. But my take is that any brand epoxy from either of these two categories should work just fine. Note: these epoxies all require slow rotation after application to prevent sags and drips until the epoxy is cured hard enough to stay put, 45-60 min for glue epoxies, 2-3 hours for decoupage varieties.

The last time I fished at night, I used a light to see while rigging, etc. Clouds of mosquitos showed up in 2 minutes. A hundred bats showed up in 3 minutes. Not a pleasant experience.

I can see bottom features and mark fish at 50 mph with my H’bird SI capable 987 sonar in downscan mode. But the SI feature will only give an intelligible reading at speeds below 10 mph and is useless attached to a trolling motor unless you choose a direction and keep the TM stable. The SI takes small slices to the side of the boat and it takes a bunch of them to build up a useable picture. Turn the TM and the pic is a useless jumble. That’s why it’s advisable to mount a SI sonar on the transom. You can creep along a shoreline with the motor and study the underwater cover. You can motor at higher speeds over deeper water and detect cover, bait schools, and bass with the downscan feature. I have sonars on both the transom and TM on my boat. I use the transom unit 90% of the time. I often fish with both sonars turned off because I already know from the Transom unit if there are fish present and I don’t want a sonar’s sound to alert nearby bass. My main use of the TM unit is in winter when jigging for deep bass over shad schools.

Waxed paper?

I think about any print shop could do it for you and might also be able to do some attractive logo or design work too. At minimum, you could go to a shop thst prints business cards and use those as your inserts. They’re cheap.

I don’t think epoxy resin and hardener weigh exactly the same by volume, which means if you measure by weight, you are not really measuring them according to the manufacturer’s instruction. It’s not a big difference, obviously, since some guys do it and it seems to work. But to me, if the manufacturer says to measure equal volumes, that’s what I do to insure the most consistent results. I’m sure you can figure out a “correction weight” for the components by weighing the full bottles when you buy them (assuming the factory filled the bottles correctly), but it seems simpler to just use a set of epoxy syringes to get equal volumes. Epoxy cures by a chemical reaction at the molecular level and if there are excess molecules of resin or hardener present, they remain unbonded. Far enough out of kilter, and the end result is tacky epoxy, or at least a coating that is not as strong as it could have been, or a coating that will yellow faster than otherwise. That’s why we keep stressing measuring exactly and mixing it thoroughly.

I can only speak as a buyer, not a seller, but I like to be able to handle a bait in a clear plastic box so I can see what it’s like close up in detail before deciding whether it would be something I’d pay money for. A display case showing the available color schemes, or a color scheme chart is nice if you are more interested in later orders, but hands on is where it’s at for me.

Hiro, that’s a great novel solution. I try to handle them so they’ll last a little longer. Fish don’t destroy balsa lures, fishermen do.

The short answer is I don’t know because I never owned one of his baits. A lot of things go into a bait’s action, more than we have discussed above. When I find a bait I really like, I go to a lot of trouble to make an exact copy, buying several examples, measuring and weighing components and even getting an X-ray to determine the internal features like ballast position and shape. Many guys think building a copy that Sorta looks like an original is going to get there but it won’t unless they really dig down to the details. Crankbait performance is complicated and small differences can have outsize effects. I don’t do this to steal a bait design and sell copies. I’ve never sold a bait in my life. It’s a hobby exercise to find out what makes a particular bait tick so I can learn how to build better baits for my own personal use.

Yeah, it’s billed as a self-tuning line tie that is free to flop back and forth. I think it's made by spro? Not certain what it’s claim to fame is; maybe that it never needs tuning. Don’t know how a hobby builder working with wire would implement such a thing - or if there’s any real utility or advantage to such a design.

In my experience, you have it backwards regarding the fore/aft position of the line tie. Most baits work well with the line tie slightly to the rear (nearer the nose of the bait) of the lip’s fore/aft mid point. Too far back and the bait will blow out to one side or the other. Too far forward and the action will be dull or even nil. Line tie position is often very critical. A millimeter fore or aft can have a big effect on bait performance. The amount of ballast and it’s position is also important. I generally build so the overall bait balance point is at the belly hanger or slightly in front of it. A wide lip tends to make the bait steadier, maybe too steady. A narrow lip will tend to introduce a some body roll along with the wiggle, which I prefer. Wide/narrow is relative to the width of the bait’s body. Take a look at several commercial baits and you see that the lip width on many of them is just a little wider than the body. That’s a good starting point. I use a Dremel with micro bits to drill the line tie hole. I want it just slightly smaller than the line tie diameter. I make the line tie from twisted soft temper stainless wire, bend it 90 degrees just below the eye so the bend is the same distance from the eye as the thickness of the lip, then force it into the lip for a tight fit. The wire on the bottom of the lip is long enough to fit into the lip slot, where I have drilled a small central slot to accept it. Glue it in with the lip. That’s what works for me. Other guys have different methods and what works, works. You just don’t want a line tie that flops around during use.

Balsa is weaker than any other wood used for crankbaits. Anything done to create a tough shell makes it somewhat more durable. A thick glue epoxy like Devcon Two Ton or a uv cured polyester like Alumi-UV are the best ways I know to create a tough shell. But the physics involved when you crash a bait on the water to clear weeds off the trebles will eventually destroy any balsa bait I’ve ever used. The lip acts as a lever to pry the balsa apart, causing water infiltration that ruins the bait or exerting enough force to break off the lip and the upper half of the bait’s head. Rapala tries to avoid this with a stiff thru-wire harness and by encasing the bait in a custom thermoplastic jacket. On some of their baits, it looks like there really isn’t much balsa content left after these reinforcements. So little that I wonder if the bait wouldn’t be better if the voids were filled with air instead of balsa, like a regular plastic bait. Probably a marketing thing or something. Regardless, they make pretty good crankbaits.

I brush the glitter in a clear acrylic latex. Brushing makes the glitter lay down and lets me put the amount I want where I want it.

Hey thanks! You explained it clearly enough that I actually THINK I understand. (pause while my wife wipes the dribble off my chin)

Ok, I’m surely no Mr. Science, and I can see how the dunk test can give you the required weight of a bait to make it suspend in water, but density? It seems to me that a dunk test with a solid lead lure would give you the same results as the same bait made from balsa. If I’ve got my head stuck where the sun don’t shine, just tell me and don’t try to explain ‘cause I’m probably too dense to understand.

Most balsa sold in stores is intended for model building and and “you get what you get” in density. The only way I know to get graded density wood is to order it online from a balsa shop. Some of them sell balsa divided into three categories: light, medium, and heavy. They charge a little extra for graded density wood but I think it’s worth it. I buy about $50 worth every 5-7 years and Google online shops to find who’s selling at what prices and density. Maybe somebody who has recently bought online can recommend a specific shop.

I use an old credit card with different sized holes drilled in it.

Balsa varies from 6 to 18 lbs/cu ft in density. Most builders prefer balsa in the top half of that density scale. The first batch I ever bought was “competition balsa” and I thought that must mean “the good stuff”. It was - for making model aircraft as light as possible with very low density wood. It made baits that were supremely active and quick floating. The fish liked it. Slapped it on the water to clear weeds off the bait and the head and the lip snapped right off. This was with a lip set deeper in the bait and undercoated and topcoated with thicker epoxy (Devcon Two Ton) than your bait. There’s really no equal for balsa in my book for shallow running square bills. But they do require extra reinforcement if you want them to last a long time under normal fishing abuse. Or you can build them “regular” and accept losing them faster than other baits. Fortunately, you can always build more. I switched to medium density 12 lb balsa. They last longer. But I can’t bring myself to use heavy balsa and give up that performance edge. I use longer hook hangers and line ties epoxied into the bait, not thru-wiring. Works for me and is a lot less trouble. I concede that thru-wiring is even more durable, especially if you split the bait and epoxy in a wire frame. But I have never had a bass break a bait, which is the main reason for thru-wiring. If one does, I’ll just salute and tie a new bait on.

Iwata needles. The smaller tipped models are fine tuned at the factory by hand and a proof sheet is included in the box. If you buy a replacement needle it will not be professionally tuned and in my experience, it will not work quite as well as the original needle. But it will work ok. These are really precision airbrushes and it pays to be careful with the needle and the tiny little paint nozzle that the needle fits into. The needles are stainless steel but are ductile steel that can be easily bent if dropped or abused. Treat them with care and you have a great brush. I can’t remember if my Revolution B .03mm model came with a test sheet, but my HP+ .02 mm model did.

Basically any airbrush is capable of painting a crankbait. It’s mostly a matter of ease of use, build quality, and dependability and for that, you tend to get what you pay for. I’ve used various brands and models and am currently liking an Iwata Revolution B. It’s gravity fed, has a .03 mm tip that is right sized for the different viscosity paints I use, the cup size seems perfect for the small amounts of paint needed for a crankbait, and the construction quality is excellent for a moderate cost. It’s a no frills basic airbrush but is made in Japan.

All the above are valid points and it goes to show how complicated the performance factors can be on even a fairly simple bait like a square bill. I’m no crankbait rocket scientist so I usually first make a very faithful copy of a successful commercial bait that I like, then tweak that design to get changes in the direction of what I think will be “better” or just different. I think that Looking at your problem bait and critically comparing its build features to a known good bait is the fastest way to realize what the problem may be. There are lots of experienced builders here on TU but they can’t really make definitive conclusions about a specific bait sight unseen. We can only suggest areas where we have goofed in our own building histories and relate the fixes that worked for us, and that’s a scattershot solution at best. I think from prior discussions and some incidental info gained from commercial bait design info, ballast low in the bait promotes stable action and high in the bait promotes unstable action, especially in regard to building hunting action into a bait. Not the ONLY factor in getting a bait to hunt, but one pathway to try.

I’d look at the length of the lip first and then the position of the line tie in relation to the lip. It’s interesting how small a lip surface is required to get a squarebill to perform. Look at the lip on a Mann’s Baby -1 crankbait - They’re tiny. I like the line tie to be right down on the lip’s surface to give it the widest side-to-side wiggle.

Your best bet is to look at the online sites in the Crankbait Suppliers thread at the top of the Hardbait page.

Well, Venture used to make a Brite-Bak tape designed for stained glass artists that was very thin, but has apparently stopped producing it. They make tapes in various thicknesses for different markets U.S.-Europe. I don’t remember all the thicknesses I saw on EBay, I just chose the thinnest which seems to be similar to the Brite-Bak and have been happy with it. It is much thinner than the generic hvac tape you find at local home centers. It has good adhesion and the edges can be burnished down to make them disappear, thin enough that I don’t need to epoxy over the edges to hide them before painting the bait, which is a big plus. But just thick enough that you can roll a fish scale texture into it. I apply the tape to a waterproof epoxy seal coat, texture it, and shoot my white acrylic color basecoat, then clean the foil with a Qtip dipped in denatured alcohol to remove the overspray and any tarnish that the foil has picked up. Then I add color to the bait. It comes out with a reflective scale sheen that I think is right for a baitfish. Not as much as chrome or holographic foil, but with plenty of reflectivity. Cleaning the foil with Qtips before adding color is sort of finnacky and I end up with a pile of 3-4 dirty Qtips for each bait, but I tend to be sloppy when shooting my color basecoat so it’s necessary for a good end result. Hope this helps.u Bob, that hula hoop tape looks pretty nice!