BobP

It's waterproof, it adheres well, it levels well - sure you can use Etex. I use D2T cut 50% with denatured alcohol and it works fine.

Rofish, I didn't mean to say that 30 min epoxy will stop 5 min epoxy from turning brown - it won't! It was a tip about installing lips to avoid getting any epoxy, especially the 5 min variety, squeezed out on the lip surface. If you glue lips in after clearcoating, you could still use the tip with 5 min epoxy but you would want to run a bead of 30 min clearcoat epoxy around the slot/lip margin to fill in any voids afterward. That's an extra epoxy session I like to avoid. Mark, to my mind it shouldn't matter about 5 min Devcon being only water resistant. Inside a lip slot or rejoining a split balsa bait, it will be protected by a waterproof clearcoat. Those are the only tasks where I use the 5 min. I've used 5 min to anchor hand twisted screw eyes BUT over time, the hole will be surrounded by a little dot of browned out epoxy - looks pretty ugly. Basically, I want to use D2T wherever epoxy will show on the outside of the bait, and 5 min wherever it won't.

Herman, here's a stab at answering your specific questions.Is this NOW the go to top/clearcoat to use? I wouldn't call any topcoat "The Go To". It's an option. DN is different from D2T. It makes a thin coating. It has more gloss. It has a slicker surface. It adheres very well. I'm confident it is tougher after it moisture cures, based on removing DN and D2T from baits for repaints. What is the consistancy of the stuff out of the can? Will fine holographic glitters and micas suspend in this coating when mixed and brushed on, then turned on drying rack? Cut with 1/4 solvent, it can be airbrushed, so it is already very thin right out of the can. The finished coating resembles most factory lure coatings (DN actually IS a factory coating!).I haven't tried glitter but think it probably melts plastic glitters. Is there less problems with micro bubles as compared to two part mixes? I dip in DN and have no bubbles. If the painted surface is smooth, the DN finish looks like clear glass. Is DN product "self leveling" as two part epoxies are? Yes, it levels fine but remember the coating is thin. If you want to hide surface imperfections, D2T works better with one coat. How does coating hold up over time when exposed to high heat of direct sunlight baking lures in storage boxes on deck of boats? It's formulated for coating fishing spoons. I've notice NO yellowing after one year. I can't say the same for D2T. Is this easier stuff to work with in less heated, higher humidity climates of Winter workplaces? Aren't all finishes affected by cold? They're all formulated to work at room temp. DN is the same. I've coated lures in a 45 degree garage in high humidity and it worked fine, but slower. How about odor / toxicity in workplace while curing? DN is solvent based and noticably off gasses solvent for the first hour or so. After that the fumes and smell are much reduced. Is it toxic? All solvent based coating are. Finally, how does the price per unit to coat the average sized bait compare to using other 2 part type epoxies? A quart of DN is 946 ML, equivalent to 31.5 double syringes of D2T. The DN will cost about $50 delivered. The D2T will cost $60+ plus tax at Walmart. How much of each topcoat you average per bait depends on too many factors to measure but I don't think the cost difference is very significant either way. Bottom line for me, DN is good stuff with some advantages over D2T and some disadvantages. I use both. It's not a contest, just making choices to try and get the best finish I can in specific environmental conditions, on specific baits.

Well, sorry to say, this shows it's the ARTIST, not the AIRBRUSH that makes pretty baits. I know because I have very nice IWATA's and still paint ugly baits. I do think "more refined" airbrushes can help us bad painters learn and execute airbrush techniques a bit easier though.

I weigh components during building and find that the paint and a coat of D2T will add .02 or .03 oz to the weight of a 2-3" bass bait. That's not much but it's something, and the truth is that ANYTHING you do to a bait changes its performance at least slightly. Sometimes that's a bad thing, sometimes a good thing.

Dweller, you can go to the McMaster-Carr website and read up on the technical differences among the various kinds of Garolite (that's how they list it). Most use G-10. It has good performance and is relatively cheap - other Garolite varieties are engineered to specific tasks, electrical conductivity, melting point, PSI limits, etc. All that is mostly beside the point for crankbait lips. G-10 is plenty stiff enough, impact resistant and waterproof. All said and done, most builders are hunting for a COLOR of Garolite they want to use. It can be any color - black, brown, yellow, white, green, etc, depending on who manufactured it and what substrate the Garolite uses (it is a substrate like fiberglass cloth covered with a thermoset polymer) . None of it is transparent. The best you can hope for somewhat translucent.

I just lightly sand plastic baits unless they're suspenders, which I can usually strip by peeling the finish off with a very sharp thin blade (I use a little Swiss Army knife). No solvent concoction I've heard about over the last 10 yrs will strip a plastic bait without 1) making a giant mess and/or 2) eating up the plastic. At least one bait repainting service uses a blast booth to remove old paint. Which clearcoat you choose makes a difference in a repaint if you think .02 oz is significant. Epoxy is thicker and heavier than polyurethane. The latter is similar to a factory finish.

I bought a couple of the flat sided Jann's baits with circuit board lips and one's lip was slightly askew. It was easy to pop the lip out of the slot with finger pressure, and a no-brainer to epoxy it back in. Unless it's expensive and I'm P.O.'ed, I say FIX it and FORGET it.

I read the Pelucid info in the link provided and it does say for interior use. You'd think with all the other toughness and gloss qualities, it would be water resistant. But ??? Dick Nite is obviously not a coatings manufacturer but that doesn't mean DN poly isn't uniquely formulated for him. There may not in fact be another source "out there" where you can buy the same stuff. I tried another moisture cured polyurethane before DN and it was not up to the same standard for coating baits AND was more expensive. Dick Nite is not a big company with lots of employees. I like instant service as well as the next guy but DN is being sold at a great discount to TU'ers, so couldn't we cut Dick a break? I ordered Bloxygen through a woodworking supply store and the wait was 2 months. The store said Bloxygen had problems getting containers and was behind on its orders. I'm not surprised others have had problems getting the stuff. Now if there was an alternate source for an aerosol argon/nitrogen finish preserver, that would be nice!

Best to do is finish and clearcoat the bait before assembling it. Whether you can get stray clearcoat out of joints depends on the kind of joint you use. If you can reach it, a very small drill bit chucked in a Dremel tool will remove epoxy or polyurethane. You an also use a piece of straight ss wire to drill it out.

Hanging to dry - I was thinking about that! No real reason to turn them since it's quite thin and all the excess drips off. Just like on a spoon. Wine bottles - I hear that's the way Dick Nite stores his poly. The can spout - space in the can has to be taken up by air for the DN to flow out the bottom doesn't it? When DN starts to cure in the can, you get an increasingly thick hard skin and the cure will not stop. You'd know it happened because venting the can's top would not help you get any more DN out. So it doesn't look like a solution to me. If the DN was contained in a collapsable membrane inside the can, that would work. But what membranes can survive DN's solvent?

There are two hardening processes at work with DN. First is the solvent evaporating. Depends on temp but you can touch DN in a few hours and handle it in 5-6 hours. Heat will speed up drying but what the heck, we aren't talking about a long time anyway. I can run my fingers lightly down the sides of a DN lure and feel how the drying is going by the difference in drag, just like with epoxy. It gets fairly slick in 24 hrs. Very slick in a couple of days. On recoating, you pays your money and takes your chances. I wait 24 hrs and never have a problem. I tried waiting 2 hours, then 8 hours, and got bubbles/wrinkling. Clearcoats benefit from a little patience. When the DN has completely dried, it's about as hard and tough as you'd expect a standard polyurethane to be. But the REAL deal with DN is it's gonna get tougher as the moisture cure part of the process continues. That takes days, perhaps weeks, maybe even months to be 100% complete. How soon you throw it in the lake or pack to ship is up to you. I try not to abuse the bait for a week after coating. Storage strategy depends on how fast you use DN and how you apply it. I dip and am a hobby builder so that's the worst case scenario. I use it slowly and need to keep it in a container big enough to dip from. I decant a quart into 2 tall 16 oz jars with GOOD air tight lids. I shoot Bloxygen into the jar just before I seal it, wrap foil around the top and secure it with a rubber band. So far, so good. I lost 2 partial quarts to premature cure after about 6 months of use, then decided to take extreme measures. Live and learn. Best case scenario is if you use DN fairly rapidly and you spray or brush it. Then you can decant a can of DN into smaller jars and seal them securely, opening them in progression as you it up. No Problemo! Bottom line - It doesn't matter what you store it in as long as there is very little moisture laden air in the container. But remember, as you use the DN and the level in the container goes down, the void will be filled with SOMETHING.

Under the heading "I don't know but I been told" - an Iwata tech told a TU'er that cleaners containing ammonia should not be used in airbrushes because it corrodes the metal. At $40+ for a new HP-B .2mm nozzle, this got my attention!

Epoxying crankbait lips Epoxy is the most common way to mount a lip but it can be a mess if you aren't careful. Epoxy yellows over months and years. Quick set 5 minute epoxy will age to brown. A bait with brown epoxy squeezed out over the margin of the lip is unattractive. Slow cure epoxies yellow less over time. But quick epoxy gets the lip set in a few minutes and we all like that. Here's the tip: to epoxy lips without getting it on the nose of the bait and out onto the lip, don't "butter" the lip with epoxy! Push epoxy into the slot with a piece of wire, wetting out all the interior slot surfaces. You can fill the slot up if you want. Then just push the dry lip into the slot. The excess will squeeze out the sides at the back of the slot, and none onto the nose/lip intersection. You can wipe it off neatly. You will probably have a little void around the margins of the nose. No problem. You can fill that with epoxy or whatever you use to clearcoat the bait later, and it will not go yellow/brown so quickly.

Yeah. I soak mine overnight in airbrush cleaner every once in awhile to get it spic and span.

Jann's is one of the better on-line stores for service and quick shipping in my experience.

I've never had any roughness when I just mixed fine glitter into the epoxy before clearcoating the bait. However, my favorite way is to use cheapo glitter paint (glitter suspended in clear acrylic latex). I thin it with water and apply it with a brush. That way, I can put glitter in the exact amount and in the exact places I want it.

Not any that looks like real chrome. I think most guys go with foil as a substitute. I like it better than chrome paint anyway.

There are several ways and materials to do it on bass baits. I drill a single hole and insert a hand twisted screw eye made from SOFT temper .040" stainless steel or brass. Bend it 90 degrees and crimp it over a slot cut in the rear of the lip. It's surprising stable. On lips with longer wire under the lip, I usually run a bead of epoxy between the wire and the lip surface. The soft temper ss is easier to form, easier to tune, but is still strong enough to fish without deforming. I've also seen lips done with one .040 hard temper stainless wire. The wire runs along the bottom of the lip and through a single hole, then is curled backward to form an eye for the line tie.

That's a great deal on a decent airbrush!

Been there, done that! A similar problem to wet paint can arise with Dick Nite if you put too much on the bait and then immediately put it on a lure turner. The DN forms a skin very quickly but there is still liquid DN underneath it, sloshing back and forth on the paint until it wrinkles, cracks, or bubbles. If you dip lures in DN, make sure to drip off all the excess on a newspaper before you put it on the turner. If you spray or brush it, make sure you do uniform thin coats. If you do multiple coats, wait 24 hrs between each. If your wrinkles are toward the tail of the bait, that's usually symptomatic of the problem.

It doesn't hurt to lube the moving parts including the needle but you shouldn't have the problem anyway. I assume you replaced the coil spring in the back of the airbrush? Did you screw down its cover all the way into the body of the brush until tight? If you did and the needle does not move smoothly back and forth when you pull the trigger, you have a clog or the needle is bent. It should slide freely. Disassemble the brush (including the nozzle) and soak the parts in solvent or airbrush cleaning solution overnight, then run the needle backward through its channel to dislodge any old paint. A very small airbrush cleaning brush comes in handy for this if you have one.

I think crankbaits are by definition hard baits that are cast and retrieved. There are lots of subcategories, some overlapping, just to further describe the crankbait's action, or more often how it is meant to be retrieved. Lipless rattle baits are crankbaits. So are jerkbaits, swimbaits, twitch baits, gliders, etc. If none of the existing names fits a crankbait you originate, make up your own descriptive name and it will be accepted if the bait becomes popular.

I'd try foiling the sides down to the belly bulge, then use a different piece of foil for the bulge area. Using the thinnest foil available would be a big help to keep any foil folds to a minimum. Don't know how you foil now. If it's HVAC tape or other thick stuff, you can try Venture aluminum craft tape, which is much thinner. And of course, there would be no problem foiling it with real silver leaf if you are so inclined (I'm not - can't do foil leafing to save my life!).