BobP

OK, DUH, now I get it - "30 mil" is close to 1/32", 40 mil close to 1/24" and 60 mil close to 1/16. If we're talking short lipped baits, I don't think it matters that much. I only use 1/16" Lexan and that thickness is fine for most bass baits but 40 mil would look better and I'm sure would perform fine on small baits less than 2". I'm less sure it would be good for long lipped deep divers where it would flex more. With a short lip, the flex is not as significant.

I know the musky and saltwater guys use thick polycarbonate (Lexan is one brand) and it "just looks right" and performs well on large baits like those. However, on bass baits I think the thin stuff looks better and I know it performs better, plus I've had no durability problem. You have to take into account the weight of lip materials when balancing and ballasting a crankbait. I developed "build formulas" for crankbaits based on thin lip material so it's like starting from scratch to substitute thick stuff. A 3/32" Lexan lip will weigh more than 3X more than one from 1/32" G-10. This was brought home to me this week when I decided to put 3/16" Lexan lips on a couple of deep diving cranbaits I was building. Why? Dunno, just an experiment. The lips weighed .25 oz and that generated a bunch of guesswork and testing to determine how much/where to ballast the bait. I ended up with .30 oz behind the belly hanger and am wondering if the cranks are going to be up to par or will end up in the trash. Yeah, they're marginally more durable but will certainly not dive as deep or as quickly as my thin lipped baits. And I suspect the need to step up the ballast in the body to offset the heavy lips will make them less lively. There are lots of material choices to make when building crankbaits and even seemingly minor ones can have big effects on the finished product. Pizza, I get polycarbonate sheets frm Mcmaster-Carr and G-10 from Asp Rocketry (the only source I know for white G-10 in small sheets). Hey, an enterprising TU member could do OK buying 4x8' sheets of white G-10 and selling 1x1' sheets to fellow TU members That stuff is HARD to find in small quantities. Put me down for some 1/32"!

I use 1/16" polycarbonate and 1/32" G-10 for everything including deep divers. Polycarbonate is very tough stuff (invented during WWII for P-51 canopies). I've never had a lip crack or break so far.

I try not to ballast the tail section since that can cut down on the bait's action; but if it needs some, put it at the lowest part of the tail. I'd fit some trebles on the hangers and insert the lip temporarily, then find the nose-tail balance point of the lure. Using that as an index, either put the ballast there or shift it front/back to alter the attitude and action of the bait. Best would probably be to waterproof the wood and do a float test. Hang different ballast weight on some ss wire and attach it to the belly, moving it until you get the float attitude and depth that looks best. Unless it's very heavy wood, I bet it will need some ballast to keep from flopping over on its side.

Yep, it an Air Pro brush, here's a link to it on Ebay http://search.#########/search/search.dll?from=R40&_trksid=m37&satitle=Air+pro+airbrush&category0= For some reason, copying and pasting a url doesn't seem to work. Just go to Ebay and search on Air Pro airbrush.

I don't think anything beats real hair for that subtle "alive" movement in water. One calf's tail will tie a bunch of bucktail jigs and it's much more durable than synthetic materials. It isn't hard to tie. If I can do it, anyone can! The only advantage of synthetics or plastics is the wider color array.

I have heard of using a closed box, lined with aluminum foil and heated with a light bulb to speed the epoxy cure process by about 1/2. Many electric motors don't like to operate in hot environments so it would be best to mount it outside the box. And watch out for possible fire hazard - personally, I wouldn't leave such a system running unattended.

I think it will be OK for UNTHINNED Devcon 2T.

Etex (Envirotex Lite) is a "pour it on" epoxy designed for finishing table tops, but it's not the only brand sold for that purpose. I'd check a local home center, paint shop or hobby shop to find alternatives. Generally, most finish epoxies have better durability and yellow less over time than many polyurethanes or varnishes but several TU'ers have used marine varnish with UV inhibitors and report good results. Polymer science is always advancing.

Here's what I used to do and it turned out just fine - make up a couple of small "C" hooks and put one on the tail and line tie after you put on the clearcoat. Hang it up on a nail, flip the lure from one hook to the other every 3-4 mins for the first 15 mins, then every 7-8 mins for the next 15 mins. Voila

I'm with RJ on this one; most coatings are engineered to work at room temperature. Speeding up the outgasing of solvents isn't always good for the formation of a durable film and a lot of things can go wrong in the meantime. Whenever I've experimented with baking or heating solvent based finishes, it has been a fiasco. So I try to keep it simple. All I use are propionate/acetone, epoxy, acrylic latex and Dick Nite polyurethane. They generally mix and match fine, harden OK at garage temps, and are durable when cured. The only heat I use is to flash dry acrylic paint with a hair dryer when airbrushing. And that's just so I don't have to stand around watching paint dry. I'm not a fan of many solvent based coatings. They're toxic and often incompatible. Lastly, some of them smell bad even after they've dried. I hate to open a tackle box and smell solvent stink on crankbaits I'm getting ready to fish with.

Predator, I sand epoxy just enough to remove its gloss whenever I'm covering it with a different coating to give the surface extra adhesion. For me, that's usually just covering an epoxy undercoating with acrylic paint. I haven't had problems NOT sanding but I guess it's just making double sure.

Mark, that needle thingy on the back of an HP+ limits the amount of needle travel and hence the amount of paint fed into the mix chamber. An Iwata MAC valve limits the air pressure/volume. MY HP+ doesn't have a MAC so I turn down the pressure at the compressor when I want smaller lines (can't call them fine!) or fine shading. I suppose delicate control of downward trigger push has the same effect but my fine motor skills don't stretch that far.

diemai, my average batch of crankbaits is about 4 I hand finish them and to me it's no fun to have a big bunch of crankbait blanks sitting on the bench, knowing I have hours of shaping and sanding in front of me. So I'm strictly a hobbiest. Nonetheless, I often want the ones I'm building to conform to the most successful patterns I've built in the past. And when I experiment, I like to start with a "known good" design and make changes from there. Ergo the notebook and scale.

I think 1/4 and 3/16" (don't know mm) are the most common sizes used on bass baits. Silver, red, and gold with round black pupils are the most common. Many Japanese lures now come with pupils shaped like cat's eyes. Don't think that's realistic for prey fish but they're popular nonetheless.

It's not an exact science but I decide how heavy I want the lure to be when finished, then work backward from there. For instance, Say I want a 2 1/2" balsa baits to weigh about 1/2 oz when finished. Heavy enough to cast well, light enough to have good action. Cut the blank, shape it/sand it, split it, waterproof the halves, and then weigh the blank, wire frame harness, and lip on a digital scale. Say all of that weighs about .20 ounce. From past experience, I know the epoxy to rejoin the halves plus the finish will total about .10 ounce, so that leaves .20 ounce of ballast to make the bait 1/2 oz. If you plan to make other baits in the future, a small digital scale is a great tool. I weigh the components and the finished weight of every crankbait I make and record it in a notebook along with traces of the body and lip shapes, notes on the build details, paint colors, size hooks used, and any later performance comments. That way, I develop a good feeling for how much various components weigh and I can reproduce a crankbait accurately at a later date, far after I've forgotten "How did I make that one 9 months ago that catches fish so good?". You can get a decent chinese digital scale on Ebay for about $25 delivered that will weigh stuff down to 1/100 ounce.

The MAC valve on Iwata brushes is easy to understand. You twist it to vary the air pressure released into the brush. More detail requires lower pressure. MAC is just a convenience. You can also control pressure with a $15-20 valve connected to your compressor. The convenience comes by having the control immediately at hand on the brush instead of having to reach over to your compressor to change pressure settings. Since my compressor sits on the bench beside the painting area, that isn't much of an advantage. In fact, I like to see a pressure reading as I adjust it so it's more convenient for me to have that control on the compressor, right beside the pressure gauge also mounted there.

Predator, thinking about your epoxy + DN question, I think the logical thing would be to use a coat of epoxy, lightly sand it to remove gloss, then apply the DN. DN is very tough, slick and glossy. It's what I'd want on the outside of the bait for appearance and to ward off hook rash. I see zero advantage in using DN first and there could be be possible adhesion problems with the DN solvents. The epoxy levels nicely, covers any boo-boos, gives visual depth to the finish and is mostly chemically inert when cured. It should be a good base for the DN. I haven't tried it myself though.

I recently tried some Mylar from a "space blanket". I glued it with contact cement, the kind used for Formica countertops and it worked OK. You want a thin layer of glue. I brushed it on then wiped most of it off with a finger.

Some paints work better with DN than others. I haven't had problems with any Createx or Translatex color, nor any of the cheapo hobby acrylics like Apple Barrel. But I had a problem today with DN over Wasco Wildlife Stone Gray. 3 identical baits painted with Createx came out just fine. The DN took abnormally long to harden on the Wasco bait but eventually seemed OK after 24 hrs. I decided to refinish the baits today after making some performance mods and lightly sanded them before repainting. When I wiped the baits with some denatured alcohol to remove sanding dust, the Wasco bait became very tacky while the Createx baits stayed hard and smooth. So I'm now leery about using Wasco Wildlife Colors under DN. I vaguely remember a few other TU'ers having wrinkling problems with Wasco and DN.

JDW11, I sand the epoxy to remove the shine and create a little "tooth" so the paint will adhere better. No primer needed.

Yeah, I get "Epoxy, DN or Coating Incompatibility Fatigue Syndrome" but all said and done, I agree with MTFISHINGRODS. I do wish folks would use the search feature more. On the other hand, if I searched for one EPOXY tidbit, it might take days of reading though threads to find that golden BB. So the polite thing to do is answer the question if you know the answer, or at least point them in the right direction to get the answer from other posts, member submitted tutorials, etc.

No clearcoat is proof against hook rash. It's not if, just when. I think of a coat of D2T and DN as having similar functional wear resistance. The D2T wears faster, but it's thicker. In my experience, the DN takes longer to begin to show hook rash, probably because it's slicker. I just use one coat of either on bass baits so I'd say one DN coat is enough. Of course, 4-5 coats of DN would wear longer still. It becomes a matter of how many operations you want to perform and how long you're willing to take clearcoating. I recommend 24 hrs between coats of DN.

Sporty, guess it depends on your compressor and the environment where you paint. A tool compressor pumps out quite a bit of moisture because of its large volume and high pressure. If you run it outside in high humidity, the effect is exacerbated. I use an airbrush compressor in my garage and my airbrush spit water occasionally before I put a moisture trap on it. The trap came with a useful air gauge too.

Dean, you know how it is - just what works after trying different stuff. I ALWAYS epoxy ballast after slapping the ballast out of a prize lure on a Canadian fishing trip I epoxy in the ballast but leave some room and use Elmer's water based interior or exterior wood filler to finish off the plug. The interior Elmer's looks like white spackling (probably is in fact) but it comes in a handy squeeze tube. The exterior version is a little harder (and waterproof) when dry. Neither contains solvent so they don't soften epoxy or paint. I've also used the epoxy putty on hardwood and it works well but the Elmer's is cheaper. The Elmer's is easy to sand with 400 grit paper. My only worry was that it isn't a structurally strong material, but covered with a seal coat and a clearcoat, I haven't had a failure yet.