BobP

I've made some of the Jann's Netcraft or Lurecraft fat balsa mini cranks that are 1 5/8" long and fish them with either a single #6 treble or a small octopus hook on the tail only. I like the hooking power of the larger hooks and especially the snagless performance of a single octopus hook on the tail. For me, true micro cranks are for spinning rod experts only. Since I'm lousy with one, I make mine 1/4 oz so I can throw them on a baitcasting rod. That means the bodies must have enough bouyancy to carry the ballast required for a compact 1/4 oz bait - and that calls for a fat balsa body. The other factor is the angle of the lip. You need a large lip angle to wiggle a short bait with weight hanging on the tail. I use about 45 degrees. I did a batch with lips at about 20 degrees and they were a disaster. My hat's off to you guys who can build such nice micro crankbaits from scratch. I'm not sure I have the fine motor skills to do that.

Joshua, water vapor under high pressure in your compressor tank condenses into water as it is released into lower pressure inside your airbrush hose, then is pushed through the airbrush and onto your crankbait, splattering the surface. The same principle applies to oil if you use a compressor that has to be oiled. So the ideal setup is to have an oil filter (if needed) and a moisture trap connected to the compressor. They are inexpensive and sold at most home centers that carry compressors and air tools. You also want a regulator to control air pressure. Maybe your compressor already has one. You only really need one regulator somewhere in the system so you can run your airbrush at between 30-50 psi. But the finer control you have over air pressure, the better you can control the airbrush spray pattern. Finer lines and shading work best at lower pressure. That's why a MAC valve on an airbrush is handy. Compact in-line regulators that attach between the airbrush and its air hose are also available, as are pressure regulators that attach to the compressor outlet and have a twist knob and a psi gauge. It's about control + convenience + cost. Airbrushes with MAC valves are the most expensive option but perhaps the handiest. An in-line regulator is also handy but may be a little unwieldy connected to the airbrush. The regulator on the compressor is the cheapest but is not handy if you are running a big compressor over in the corner, 6 ft away from your airbrush. All of them work. You need at least one of them. You can mix and match them as you choose for convenience.

Undercoating, waterproofing, priming - I can't keep it all straight! I brush 50/50 denatured alcohol/Devcon 2T on raw wood. 8-10 hrs later, I sand the gloss off the epoxy and paint. The denatured alcohol will slightly raise any end grain on the bait but that gets smoothed when sanding off the gloss. Cured epoxy is a fairly inert coating and won't react with any succeeding coating I've tried.

I use an 8' carpenter's workbench in the garage sitting in front of my wife's car. Wood dust galore but my wife's happy to keep me out of the house I think the room you need mostly relates to how many power tools you use .

I've used .012" 180 lb test ss leader wire (Malin Hard Wire Leader) for thru-wire frames and it works OK. But I really prefer .040-.050" soft stainless steel wire because it's stupid easy to shape but strong enough not to allow the line tie and hanger deform under fishing pressure (on bass baits). I especially like it for line ties in balsa baits because it's easier to bend the tie to tune the bait. Bending a hard wire ss line tie to tune the bait can sometimes break the clearcoat around it, leading to water penetration and failure.

Sounds like you're having fun! I don't know a magic way to remove blemishes from rod blanks except to sand them out and refinish the blank with urethane rod finish (Janns Netcraft). You don't want to sand down into the fiberglass blank material. I use a single edge razor blade to remove old thread when I replace a guide or a complete handle. It will shave off the old epoxy and does a neat job if you're patient and keep the blade at an acute angle to the blank surface. For counterbalancing, I roll/beat lead weights into a cylinder and epoxy them into the butt of the blank. If you want, you can also lengthen a rod by epoxying in an extension that will be covered by the handle. Know what you mean about too many crankbaits - I give mine away like crazy and still have around 100 sitting in boxes in my garage

The shape may affect the action somewhat but I've had good results on bass baits with slanted and straight up/down joints. Both swim just fine. I prefer a moderate back slant so the joint is less observable to a following fish. As to tapering the segments at the joint, that depends on how much you want the joint to flex and whether you want the segments to click together. The specific joint mechanism you select also enters into it. Clicking segments wear the clearcoat faster and you need to keep an eye on them. I definitely wouldn't want them on a trolling bait. If you use epoxy as a clearcoat, you want all the edges at the joint to be rounded off. Epoxy draws away from any sharp edge and becomes quite thin. Looks OK but isn't. The swimbaits I've made have diving lips that "swim the bait". If you're talking about gliders or lipless baits, you need advice from a musky lure maker.

You may be disappointed. Most "chrome" paints aren't very reflective and don't resemble factory chrome on crankbaits. Someone on the site may be able to guide you to one that does but last I heard the paint costs in excess of $100. A viable alternative may be to foil the bait. There are various products and techniques for foiling which you can investigate via the search option. For real chrome-like foiling, I suggest looking at mylar foil - the kind they use in those emergency "Space Blankets" and in some packaging and craft projects.

Well, here's an unsolicited recommendation about airbrushes. I've used Paasche, Badger and Iwata. Right now, I use an Iwata HP-B+ with a .2mm tip and a Revolution B with a .3mm tip. If I had to pick just one airbrush for painting crankbaits, it would be the Revolution. Why? The inexpensive Revolution has exactly the same flawless build quality and excellent control as the HP. Its .3mm tip almost never clogs and I can use it for everything from color basecoating to decently fine detail work. Dump the paint in the top and shoot it. No worries about thinning or shooting thicker pearlized paint. Not as fine a spray pattern as the HP, but fine enough for 99% of crankbait painting work. The Revolution B is just "right sized" for painting crankbaits as a hobby. Not fussy, high quality construction, easy to clean, and the B cup holds the right amount of paint. IMO, it's a steal at around $70. Airbrush prices go up as the tip sizes go down. It's not about the quality of construction, which tends to remain more or less constant through each manufacturer's models.

I agree with Spike, you definitely don't want spring tempered because it's impossible to shape. I don't know what target species you're after but for bass baits, I use soft temper .040 or .050" stainless steel. It's slightly harder than soft brass and is easy to bend but is strong enough not to distort under load when bent into a small diameter circle, like a hook hanger or line tie. When you use a wire that's difficult to bend like .050" hard temper stainless (aka bright stainless), you will have problems fitting the bait back together unless you bend it exactly straight in a single plane.

Sounds like you may want either a manifold or a quick disconnect so you can attach more than one tool or change tools more easily. For the airbrush, an adjustable pressure regulator with gauge is about $20 at home centers, likewise a moisture trap. I don't think anyone can say what adapters you need; that depends on your specific configuration. But most home centers also carry the necessary adapters. I recommend Teflon plumber's tape on all connections. Most Iwata brushes have a recommended max pressure of around 45 psi. I haven't heard of damaging an airbrush with higher pressure (some guys use up to 60 psi) but I use 40 psi max with my Iwatas. You can dial that in on your pressure regulator and use the MAC valve on your airbrush to fine tune the air you need for various paint shots. JMHO, if the compressor is handy at the bench where you can easily adjust its regulator, there's not much need for an airbrush with a MAC valve. It's a fairly expensive feature that does the same thing.

I haven't looked specifically for HEAVY gauge wire but mcmaster.com sells all kinds of wire in a wide selection of gauges. I'd check there first. Good service, prices and shipping.

Yah, we feel the effect here in the States too. Lead costs more, it costs more to power manufacturing, and more to transport products to market. I bought a mid-size battery for my wife's car today WHOLESALE from my son's automotive repair shop for $85. That's at least $20 more (or about 33%) than I would have expected to pay 6 months ago. But I don't think it's practical to stockpile lead acid batteries for future use!

Everyone uses a different routine for thru-wiring, based on the materials they use and what they found to work when learning how to do it. I'm still working my way through some SOFT balsa. You have to reinforce it to make it durable so thru wire is a "must". Here's my routine - I cut the lip slot and scribe a centerline around the blank before shaping it. After shaping/sanding, cut the bait in half. As long as you have the scribe line to follow, it's easy to cut soft balsa exactly with a single edge razor blade. Start at the tail, take your time and keep the blade on track. I use a wire frame for the nose line tie and the tail hanger, a rattle if you want and it fits (not much room in a 2 1/4" bass bait) and an integrated lead ballast/belly hanger. Glue with 5 min epoxy. I mark the outline of the wire frame and ballast/hanger on one side with a Sharpie, then use a nail set to indent a path for the wire and a Dremel high speed cutter to make space for the ballast/belly hanger. Press the halves together and you'll get shiny indentations on the other half to show you where added indenting is needed. You want the halves to fit exactly with all hardware inside. I apply 5 min epoxy with a flat piece of plastic to both sides of the bait, put in the hardware and fit the halves together, wiping off the squeeze-out with a paper towel wetted with denatured alcohol. I don't clamp the bait; by the time it's together, it's starting to set up and the halves are closed together - just lay it aside for a few minutes. Try to avoid getting glue in the lip slot. If you do, use a scrap piece of lip material to sweep it out of the slot before it hardens. The lip is glued in with epoxy after reinforcing/waterproofing the exterior and painting.

Speaking of skirt materials, I fish football jigs alot and use either rubber tied with wire or superline (most action in the water), or the Hydrosilk brand of silicone skirts (round strands, good action and durable). The drawback with rubber is that you can't use an oil based scent or it will melt the skirt. It comes in fewer colors than silicone but to me, the superior action outweighs that. Green Pumpkin, Black/Blue, Brown, a few in White and I'm a happy camper. There are very few sources for rubber skirting material, so the variety is not great. Silicone skirts come in a rainbow of colors and in many cuts. Check out staminainc.com and Janns Netcraft for examples.

I'm not surprised there were only a few votes and comments during the poll. Like others, I suspect, I just stumbled on the poll the last day it was active. I usually surf straight to the Hardbait Forum and seldom check other parts of TU except to peruse the Gallery occasionally. So I wouldn't conclude that low response numbers is a sign of low interest in the lure making community. As far as I am aware, this is the largest and certainly the best luremaking site on the internet. As is obvious in the forums, there are plenty of guys who use the site quite heavily. Inlcuding me!

I like Dick Nite poly very much but keeping it in the can it comes in almost guarantees it will go bad, IMO. I decant a quart of poly into several jars with screw tops and I cover the jar tops tightly with tin foil to guarantee no air gets in or vapor escapes. I dip lures in the jar and draw them out slowly but never let the poly drip back into the jar. Hold it over a newspaper instead, then when the drips slow down somewhat (usually 10-12 drops on a bass bait), clip it onto a drying wheel. My quart of poly has been doing just fine for 9-10 months now with no sign of curing in the jar. Salsa jars with fluted necks are my favorite containers since they have good lids, are tall enough, and their constricted neck is just big enough to fit a bass crankbait through. When I screw on the lid, it pops up to indicate an air tight seal is in effect.

Looks interesting if a bit pricey. I use a 50/50 mix of Devcon Two Ton epoxy and denatured alcohol. Why? I've got the stuff on hand and it works well. It penetrates with the solvent but still maintains enough of the original properties of the Devcon that it cures to a glossy, leveled out coating. In fact, adding DA makes Devcon glossier than usual, either as sealant or in a topcoat. And a batch lasts long enough that I can brush a bunch of crankbaits before it begins to set up. The only drawback is I feel it's best to sand off the gloss with 400 grit before painting. Don't know if that's necessary but I do it anyway.

Read Vodkaman's links and then take a look at some successful commercial crankbaits to give yourself more insight into lip design. Shadraps have long narrow lips that give them a tight wiggle and some body roll. A DT-16 has a wide lip relative to its body and has a wide wiggle and not much body roll. Many commercial crankbaits undergo lots of testing and tweaking before they go into production, so looking at their design can give you a headstart. Look at the length of the lip versus the body of the crankbait, the lip width vs the body width, the angle of the lip indexed from a line from the nose of the bait to the middle of the tail hanger. On baits where the line tie is out on the lip, the distance from the nose to the line tie and from the line tie to the end of the lip are important. Line ties closer to the nose of the bait tend to give a tighter wiggle. Too close and the bait loses stability. To far out and the bait loses action. An "average" lip typically has the line tie at about 40-45% of the distance from the nose to the end of the lip. Crankbaits are complicated little hydrodynamic systems. Change anything on the lip or the body and it affects everything else. So lips can't be considered in isolation - you have to consider everything together. The fore-aft balance point of the crankbait and the overall weight are also critical factors. Evaluating successful crankbaits is a shortcut but it still takes work and experimentation to get where you want to go.

Wyld, on deep divers with the line tie out on the lip, I don't make the line tie a part of a thru-wire frame. It's just too hard to get it right and the lip straight. On baits with the tie point on the nose, yes, that is a part of the wire frame. I've never had a failure using 5 min Devcon to glue in lips or hook hangers, over several hundred baits. These are all bass baits, not baits for bluefish or Muskies. The 5 min epoxy always gets covered by a clearcoat of either 2 Ton Epoxy or Dick Nite polyurethane.

I'm a dedicated hobby builder. I'm not looking for an enhanced sales outlet, a commercial edge, free advertising for any product, or "ancilliary" benefits like a free T shirt. I'm just here for the community interaction. I understand your desire to take the site to a "higher level" to derive more benefit from the hard work and expense you put into maintaining TU. But IMHO, when you get above a nominal subscription charge (and I strongly feel that $50+ per year is well above "nominal"), you'll see a huge drop in TU membership. Will enough paying members remain to offset the loss in advertising income? I hope so but ???. No sour grapes here, I enjoy TU and wish it every success, whatever form it takes. But I've seen several sites become moribund failures when they strayed from the free membership/advertising supported model they began with.

I've heard lots of ways to clean crankbaits. Toothpaste, soaking in Oxyclean, and scrubbing with a Mr Clean Magic Eraser pad all work. The Magic Erasers work great to remove stubborn stains like mildew. First step is to remove the trebles and throw them away if they show any rust and you intend fishing the lures. Obviously, I'm not a collector! To me, if it won't catch fish, it's trash.

You'll find a BUNCH of info on equipment if you use the search function to check specific topics in this forum. Most brands of airbrush do a good job on crankbaits but personally I like Iwata because they are very high quality and controllable. I've used other brands and models, and know you can learn to use any airbrush effectively. It's a matter of learning a specific brush, how best to use its good features and overcome its limitations. Right now I use a HP-B+ with a .2mm tip and a Revolution B with .3mm tip. I'm liking the Revolution more and more. Although it is one of the cheapest Iwata's ($60-70) it has the same high quality as more expensive Iwata's and its .3mm tip is just the right size for most crankbait painting chores. I wish it were the first airbrush I ever bought instead of the last.

I don't have any pics or I'd attach them. It's really straightforward; you want a centerline running all around the bait, plus some guidelines for beveling off the body edges, plus some lines to show you how to taper the tail and head of the bait's body. Start by cutting the lip slot while the bait is still "square". Next, measure half the width of the bait and put a small tic there. Adjust your compass so it hits that tic, then run a centerline all around top and bottom the bait to give you an index for sanding and installing the hardware. Draw the same centerline from the opposite side to double check the centerline is actually in the center. Next, measure the amount of taper you want on the head and tail from the centerline. Put small tics at the head and tail on the top and bottom of the bait. Draw a horizontal line across the back and belly of the bait from which you will taper it toward both ends. Use a piece of flexible acetate to draw the taper lines on the top and bottom of the bait, then sand down the sides of the bait to the taper guidelines. Now for the sanding/shaping guides. Adjust the compass to about 1/4 the width of the bait (more or less) and run 2 lines on the top of the bait, one on each side. Do the same for the bottom of the bait. Now scribe a line around the circumference of each side of the bait. When done, all you need to do is remove the wood at the edges of the bait down to the guidelines on the top/sides/bottom to bevel all the edges equally. I do that with a Dremel sanding drum. From there, I use the Dremel sander to soften the beveled edges into the top, bottom and sides of the bait, ending up with a rounded shape. The whole point is to keep the body symetrical. You can't freehand a perfectly symetrical body with hand tools, especially in wood that has a grain pattern. The grain pattern fools your eye and leads you to make the bait lopsided. Symetrical baits run straight and perform well. Lopsided ones don't. Hope this helps.

If you are a hobby builder like me and doing a few (not hundreds of ) baits, I suggest scribing contouring guide lines with a compass along the top, bottom and sides of the lure (just after you cut out the blank of course). Then use a Dremel sanding drum to knock off the edges down to the lines, and lastly sand the 4 resulting bevels into a rounded body. It takes abnormal skill at shaping/sanding to "freehand" a crankbait so that it is symetrical. Wood grain distorts your perception of what is symetrical and what isn't. Better to use any and all available "tricks" to eliminate guestimation and get measured results. If you're building 100 of the same crankbait, you'd want want to take the extra trouble to build a set of shaping jigs to make sure you get them symetrical. If you're just doing a few, the scribed lines will usually get you "close enough". BTW, while you're scribing, get a center line drawn all around the bait too. It really helps to locate the hardware and serves as an index during the final sanding.