BobP

Sounds like you have it in hand. Unless you're painting a suspending bait, you can just lightly sand the old surface to give it some tooth instead of taking all the finish off. I recommend starting with a white basecoat to keep your colors true.

You'll get mostly personal opinions on this, and here's mine: The Ambassadeurs are solid reels IF they fit your style of fishing and you are comfortable using them. But reel that you can't trust not to backlash isn't much fun to fish with. The 5000/5500's aren't noted for great cast controls, nor for long casts - but there are a zillion of them around and they still have fans. They do best with heavy line and heavy lures. Me, I'd only use one for trolling There are much better reels around nowadays if you're casting for bass. I've reconditioned some Ambassadeur Pro Max 1600 and 3600 reels from the late 60's and early 70's and love using them. They are round 8.5 oz reels - much smaller and lighter than a 5000/5500, so they palm nicely. They have better cast controls and the Promax has 6 internal bearings. Cast/retrieve like a dream and are actually HARD to backlash. They were a top line model for Ambassadeur "way back when" and sold for $169 (a pretty penny in 1969-1971!). There's a linear relationship between quality and cost, up to the mid-range models in each company's reel lineup. After that, you pay a premium for fewer and fewer added features. If you want a low profile, fairly light baitcaster I recommend buying from a large reel company and not a "house brand" from BassPro or Cabelas, etc. The big boys stand behind and produce a more reliable reel. If it breaks 5 yrs from now, parts will be available and you can get it fixed. If there are internal upgrades or fixes to the model, factory service centers will usually add them at no charge during repair service. I don't claim to have fished all the mid-range reels but have seen good reports on these: > Abu Garcia Revo S - $109 > Shimano Citica CI100DSV - $119 Whatever brand catches your fancy, I'd get a reel with an aluminum frame. 4-5 bearings are good. More MAY be smoother but beware, some second tier manufacturers stuff mediocre reels with low quality bearings as a marketing gimmick. Braid - It doesn't cast better or worse than other lines. It has excellent sensitivity but fish can see it in clear water. I use it for Carolina rigs and when fishing heavy grass cover. Otherwise, I favor a copolymer or fluorocarbon line. If you use braid, be sure to spool some copolymer line as backing first, then tie the braid to it. If you tie braid directly on the spool, it will slip under pressure and you'll think your reel's drag is broken. Besides, you'll need backing to fill up the reel since most braid comes in 125 yd spools.

JMHO, if all you have is the 1/8" Dremel round over bit, don't bother - it doesn't take off enough material to be useful IMO. It's about equivalent to one pass with a Dremel sanding drum. Want a Dremel router table anyway? I got one you can have cheep!

It looks to me like it might require more D2T resin and hardener in there than I normally use on a couple of baits, to get mixed properly. Plus you gotta clean off the little puck after. Might be useful for guys who use larger amounts of Etex for a batch of 5-6 baits though.

Downriver, it's nice to have someone around who knows chemistry! Speaking of yellowing, I haven't seen any significant yellowing on > 100 baits topcoated with Devcon 2T. Some are more than 5 yrs old. 95% of the problems I see or hear about regarding D2T not hardening result from poor measuring or inadequate mixing - especially the latter. I mix it like crazy, until it looks milky with air bubbles, then add a FEW drops of denatured alcohol to help it release bubbles while I'm brushing it on the lure. No failures for a couple of years now.

I use frisket material (thin plastic film with paper backed adhesive). But I don't remove the backing - I just hold it down, shoot the pattern, dry the stencil, and then flip it over to shoot the other side of the lure. An Xacto knife can make fairly detailed/small features with it. A stencil lasts indefinitely, or until you get small lines clogged with dried paint. A big roll of the stuff costs around $10 and is enough to last years and years. Other guys use milk jugs or other plastic but I like something that you can easily cut with an Xacto.

Shoot through a large womens' comb. The side with large teeth will be right around 1/8". Works nice!

About half the unthinned pearls I try shoot thru a .2mm brush are fine, half clog after a few seconds. I use a .3mm tip brush to color basecoat, which is when I use pearls most often. No problems then. I'm glad to have a .2mm tip brush for fine shading but seldom use it for fine line work because I like to use templates for that. They are the only way I can get the same design on both sides of the bait, which I personally can't do freehand. To me, the .3mm is a good intermediate size that comes close to "doing it all". But it depends on how much freehand line detail and fine shading you want to accomplish, plus your airbrush skills.

I assumed he rotated the motor 90 degrees so the driveshaft was horizontal to make the baits rotate in the vertical plane like a ferris wheel. Whether the bait is attached to the ferris wheel in a horizontal or a vertical position makes no difference. But just slinging it around in a horizontal circle like a lariat is not gonna get it done!

Personally, I like the uniform quality of Iwata brushes: a Revolution B with .3mm tip for pearls and color basecoating, and a HP-B with .2mm tip for fine shading and lines. Both of these "B" models have 1/16 oz gravity feed cups and together cost less than $250. The airbrushes B75nweav recommends sound very similar, but of chinese vs japanese manufacture. The main determinant of pattern width and level of paint atomization is the tip size, so I want to know that before selecting a brush.

Theoretically, as long as a lure is turned 360 degrees in either the horizontal or vertical plane (or any plane for that matter), the epoxy should stay where you brushed it because every point on the lure is being rotated through 360 degrees. The second factor is rotation speed. Thin coatings need to be rotated faster than thick ones. Etex is a medium thin coating, so 4-8 rpm is probably ideal for it. Like Mark says, several thin coats will work much better than one thick one because little goofs are less noticable and tend to get leveled over by successive coats. Just take your time and don't get impatient The extra effort and waiting is worth it to get a pristine clearcoat.

I'm betting that D2T, since it's sold as a glue and not an outdoor finish, contains no UV protection.

I've fished out of a Triton 19 footer since 2002. Put $40 of gas in it this morning, about enough for a day's fishing if I keep the Merc EFI under 4000 rpm. A friend belongs to an electric jon boat fishing club. What does it cost him for a day's fishing? $1.50 for electricity to recharge the batteries? Yeah, I can run and gun over a big lake at 60+ mph. And I confess that I enjoy running at WOT with my hair on fire. The jon boat guys creep around smaller lakes and local municipal reservoirs which have areas set aside for electric boats only. The several times I fished with them, they give a good account of themselves; coming to weigh in with sacks that would easily rival what you would expect to see in a BASS club tournament. So, is there a moral to this story? Draw your own conclusions. But I can see a possible future of bass fishing - slower, smaller, but still catching plenty of fish. Not necessarily worse, but different. I'm not sure I'll even miss "the good ole days". A few things I suspect though - it's not a great time to open a bassboat dealership, or to work for one of the major bassboat manufacturers, or to be an executive in BASS, or to start a career as a professional tournament fisherman.

Hopping, dragging, stroking, deadsticking, swimming - you name it and there's guys doing it with a jig. Basically, any retrieve you use with a worm or other plastic can be used on a jig, so there's no wrong way to fish it - except the one the bass won't bite today. I fish 3/4 oz football jigs in deep water 15-35 ft. Usually with a skirt and a Netbait Paca Chunk Jr or a Zoom Superchunk Jr. I use short hops and pauses to keep in contact with the bottom before trying other retrieves. For shallow wood cover, lighter jigs with more streamlined shapes do better and don't get hung up as much. Flip it in there, let it drop through the cover to the bottom, then hop it once or twice before retrieving it and making a new pitch. When bass are hunkered down in heavy cover, nothing gets to them and gets their attention faster than a jig.

Creek Monster, the knot you describe sounds like the San Diego knot. It works very well for fluorocarbon and is as quick to tie as a cinch knot. The Alton Jones knot is the same except the tag end is threaded only through the loop next to the hook, and not the top loop. I think knots that include wraps around the mainline to cushion it from shock are worthwhile for superlines and fluorocarbon. I've easily broken 30 lb braid tied with a Palomar knot by snap setting against a snag. I like the knot but no longer use it for everything. Here's a link to a knot tying instruction site, fyi. http://shoreangling4u.tripod.com/knotguide/id30.html

I think all epoxies have about the same performance once they are on the bait and cured. DN is thinner but very tough after it has moisture cured for about a week. Having sanded both epoxy and DN cleared baits, IMO the DN is hands down more durable and is more resistant to hook rash, etc. I dip baits in DN and turn them for 45 mins. It takes less time for the solvent to flash off, but what the heck, 45 min isn't too long. If you dip, you want to let the DN drip off on a piece of newspaper (NOT into the container!) until the drips slow, then clip them on the dryer. Why? It's much thinner than epoxy and will run if too thick. Plus, a heavy coating will skin over quickly but there will still be liquid DN moving around on the bait under the skin. That can cause it to wrinkle the paint. If you want a 2nd coat, wait 24 hrs before re-dipping. I haven't clearcoated any segmented baits with DN so can't say whether it has the same tendency as epoxy to draw away from sharp edges while drying. That is typical of many finishes but epoxy does it bad and I haven't noticed DN doing it. Sure-fire solution? Round over all sharp edges before painting. Some guys brush on or spray DN through an airbrush. The whole point for me was getting a dip finish. Fast and easy to use but it requires careful storage and handling to keep it from curing in the container.

That's a great looking and very neat foil job Smitty. I foil mine with silver backed tape and spray it with Createx transparent yellow to get a gold foil, which is brighter but not nearly as classy looking as yours.

I generally feel the whole thru-wire process is a giant PITA and don't do it except on soft balsa. But I do have some soft balsa, so watchagonnado? As far as ballast cavities, if you're using an integrated ballast/belly hanger, I don't think it matters how you make the cavity since it shows anyway - just drill it out after gluing the bait back together. If you want to hide ballast, I fit a cavity in one side, then paint around it with a little acrylic paint and press the halves together to mark the other side. For the wire frame, I shape it on one half, outline it with a Sharpie and use a nail set to indent the balsa. Press the halves together and indent any areas that are shiny from the wire frame on the other half. If you squeeze it in a vise, it will deform the side of a soft balsa bait.

I decide how much ballast to use by weighing some successful swimbaits that are similar in size/design to the one I'm building, then building mine to that target weight, using a digital scale to weigh the components. On a 7" swimbait with 3 body segments and a small lip, I put half the ballast just behind the hook hanger in the 1st segment and the rest in the middle segment in front of its hook hanger. None in the tail. It swims great. It helps to look at some of musky bait building sites since some smaller musky baits are similar to bass swimbaits. Most of us bass bait builders can steal some great ideas from those guys! For instance, the super popular Sebile Magic Swimmer looks to me like a downsized segmented musky glider One site I checked (don't have the url but somebody on TU does) has build diagrams of some popular musky designs, including ballast placement and amounts. It's worth a look to get some general idea of how larger minnow baits should be weighted.

2 possibilities - either you didn't wet out those areas properly when brushing on the D2T, or there was grease or oil in those spots and the epoxy "fisheyed" on you. It's good practice to wipe down the lure with a cloth wetted with denatured alcohol to remove any oil before you apply the epoxy. You can spot fix the areas with D2T and a small artist's brush - use a Qtip with DN first to remove any oil. It's sort of an art to get just the right amount of epoxy on a void so it levels out even with the rest of the finish. But the bass don't notice it so it's just a cosmetic thing.

Take the swimbait apart or immobilize the joints with rubber bands. Hook a bent wire hanger on both ends of the bait and hang it on a nail, switching tail/head every 30-45 secs for about 10 mins, then every 2-3 minutes for 15 mins, then every 5 minutes for about 15 mins. This works just fine at room temps or higher using Devcon. Etex is too thin and cures too slowly to be hand-turned (unless you have LOTS more patience than me!). Epoxy will draw away from any sharp edge as it cures, leaving a very thin coating that won't withstand much abuse. If you have edges, you need to round them over with sandpaper or try another clearcoat like polyurethane.

Hey, if it works, it works. But its application may have limitations. For most color transitions on a crankbait, you'll want to fade from one color to another - not a distinct line. And when you do want distinct transition, it's probably easier to do it with a solid mask cut out with an Xacto knife. No waiting for the liquid mask to dry, and it's reusable.

Auto supply stores sell a liquid polish designed to remove oxidation from plastic headlight lenses, etc. Don't press down too hard and damage the screen. If that won't work, you may have to resort to some kind of polymer coating to fill in the oxidized layer and make it transparent again. But that is not a permanent fix. It's worthwhile to email Lowrance and ask their advice. Maybe they have a better fix. Whatever, take the sonar off the boat and store it in the house (not in the boat!) when not on the water. UV light hazes plastic screens; storage in a high humidity boat compartment that is alternately heated and cooled every day is asking for moisture to infiltrate the sonar and fogging the screen from the inside.

Oscar, sounds like you found a quick cure polyester hardener for Etex. I'm guessing the Etex solvent broke down some of the glitter and did just that. Epoxy generates heat while curing. The larger the epoxy mass, the more heat is retained and the faster the cure. That's why spreading epoxy on a flat surface extends its work time - the greater surface area allows the heat to radiate off faster, slowing the cure.

I'm still using a bag of propionate pellets I got from Swede last year and it's nice stuff. Disolve it in acetone. I don't use it as a clearcoat or in making lips but It waterproofs and reinforces wood bodies nicely. You can control the thickness of the coating by varying the number of dips you do on the bait. Acetone makes it dry very quickly, in just a few minutes. Good stuff.