BobP

I grew up in a family in the retail trade and I'd rather get a root canal than deal with customers. It would completely take the fun out of making crankbaits. I took a guided trip in Alabama last year and gave the guide, a BASS pro, some baits in addition to the fee and tip. Gotta get rid of excess baits somehow! A month ago, I get an email asking if I would sell him some. That's a quandry. I told the guy sorry, I'm not in business but I'll build you a batch of cranks gratis. Now, I'm hoping the guy finds a custom builder this year that he likes better than me. The only way I'd consider anything other hobby building is if I could place baits made for my own satisfaction and to my own schedule with a retailer on consignment. I like the idea of having diverse bass fishermen enjoy something I've put heart and soul into. But only on my terms. I want to keep my amateur status

I'm amazed that you got a coating of 5 min Devcon on a lure before it hardened! Can't comment about Permatex but I always find double syringes of Devcon 2 Ton at Walmart just beside the Devcon 5 min stuff. $1.99 at the store near me. Works geat, durable and it levels out on the lure beautifully. Good luck next time around!

hey, I read that article too! ingenious use of a pipe cutter! I use a Dremel flap sander to remove finish quickly when possible. But if you're going the whole route and adding weight so the tail will drag, why remove the finish at all? It's weight is insignificant on a 4 1/2" Spook. Just give it a light sanding with 400 grit paper. As far as gluing it back together, I'd probably try epoxy. You need to sand the edges flat after using the cutter to get maximum glue surface. Tape it together with some cellophane tape until it's cured and then sand the area smooth.

Bass fishermen generally like the largest trebles possible for hooking power, provided they don't 1) foul each other or 2) damage the bait's action. Where you put the belly hanger often dictates what size trebles to use. On a regular size Rebel Pop-R, about 2 1/2", I'd use #4's. But you have to fit the trebles to each bait.

I say get some frisket material and a sharp xacto knife! I also use an Iwata and like it. Sometimes I can even shoot thin lines if the paint is thin enough and the pressure low enough. But I can NEVER freehand exactly the same lines on both sides of the bait. So I cut stencils and use them for bars, gills, kill spots, craw legs, etc. One tip. Even the low tack brands of frisket material usually have enough adhesive to lift fresh acrylic paint or leave an adhesive residue when peeled off. So I cut stencils but don't remove the backing, then shoot the paint toward the backing paper. The paper absorbs the spray except in the intended areas, and the stencil remains intact to be used multiple times.

I think I'd be honor bound to bring the failure to the attention of the lure builders, esp if they're local. They probably know what happened and have corrected the problem in the interim but if they haven't, they probably won't be in business much longer. If the baits haven't been fished hard or undergone some extreme environmental stress, I'd expect new baits. And an apology.

Sounds like you're a smallmouth fisherman? They like bright colors while largemouth favor more natural colors in my experience. I use flourescent (aka neon) yellow often for chartreuse lure bellies. And I like the new Rapala purplescent pattern with pearl belly, purple back and bars, with gold accents on the side. Quite a few purples and blues find their way into bass lures, especially over chartreuse. Good color combo for stained water.

OLM, Many epoxies come pre-thinned with solvent which can begin to disolve solvent based colors when brushed on. This includes Envirotex Lite, a table-top epoxy popular among builders here on TU, as well as many of the rod guide epoxies. The solvent thinned epoxies usually do fine over latex paint. I've never seen a true one part epoxy. Devcon 2 Ton is also popular. It's a glue epoxy with a medium slow cure rate and very good leveling properties. Devcon is considerably more viscous than most clearcoats and it cures to a thick clearcoat. Some like that, others don't. Since it doesn't contain solvent, Devcon is among the most "fool proof" epoxies. I don't like it for restorations but it works well on original wood crankbaits.

The best thing I ever did for split ring work was to buy a good pair of split ring pliers. By good I mean NOT the cheap aluminum ones. Forged steel pliers from Texas Tackle or another quality manufacturer. If you fish or build baits, you may as well buy some. They'll save countless hours, broken fingernails and a bunch of bent split rings.

No idea which epoxy you used, but any of them should have been rock hard after 24 hrs. Problems with epoxy are almost always caused by what Vodkaman said. Either the hardener and resin were not measured 1:1 or you didn't mix them thoroughly enough. But all is not lost! If you mix a good batch and re-clearcoat the lure, the new epoxy will cause the soft stuff to cure too. You don't have to use lab equipment to measure but it needs to be approximately 1:1. I mix mine with a flat plastic stick for at least 1 minute and am careful that all the hardener and resin get mixed. Anything left unmixed at the edge of a container will not cure or will be soft.

Depends on what you need. staminainc.com or jannsnetcraft.com have ready made lips, hangers, hooks, etc. If you want to shape your own lips, mcmaster.com carries polycarbonate and G-10 circuitboard material plus various kinds of wire to fashion your own hangers. lurehardware.com has lips and integral belly hangers/ballasts.

Sweet! Please show us the final and some detail on how you joined the segments. That's always a pain in the neck for me.

I was told by pro rod builders and a company epoxy expert that there is a minimum epoxy film thickness required to get the best surface-to-surface bond. So I worry that a tight lip may wipe enough epoxy off that an ideal bond may not occur. I'm not saying tight lips fail. What works, works. I also use scrap lip material to keep paint out of the lip slot while painting. The fake lips have holes drilled in one end so I can hang baits on nails over my workbench. I increase the thickness of the scrap with blue masking tape until I get a firm secure fit. The scrap is also a neat handle by which to hold the bait with locking forceps while painting.

For me, it isn't just "sometimes" that the stick on eyes begin to pull off the surface of and curved surface. It almost always happens and usually after you put on the clearcoat. Especially if there's any solvent in the clearcoat. I use a Dremel high speed cutter to make eye sockets for 3D eyes. I know they'll stay put.

Many problems with Devcon relate to temperature. It won't expel bubbles very easily at below 70 degrees. I never have problems when it's 75-90 deg in the garage. If you heat the epoxy before mixing, it will be thin but it also begins to cure very quickly if you go too high. You also have to consider if you're brushing epoxy on a cold bait or mixing it in a cold container. These days when most households maintain cooler temps in winter, you may not have a warm place to work. I've never found a perfect solution except to mix only enough for one bait and get it on there asap.

If it bugs you ,get some adhesive eyes and slap them on. Or put in some eye dots with a Sharpie. Or paint the eyes and clearcoat just the eye area. There's lots of ways to skin this cat. What's important is ending up with a bait you are confident will catch fish.

I think if you shift ballast rearward to improve casting, you'll kill the action. Many plastic jerkbaits baits have ballast that shifts to the tail for casting and then falls into a lower forward belly cavity on the retrieve. You can do that in wood if you're willing to engineer the proper ballast cavity. If it were me, I'd just be happy to have a great trolling lure. There are baits where long castability is irrelevant, e.g., a D-Bait. Others catch bass like crazy but cast like crap, e.g., a #5 Rapala Shadrap. There's no free lunch, but neither are there any no-no's. Design a bait to perform to the max in a specific fishing situation, recognizing that every design choice must be weighed against a tradeoff of some kind.

I use it straight. If you need to thin it, a few drops of denatured alcohol or lacquer thinner mixed in after the 2 parts are mixed will not cause a disaster - but epoxy companies say it's strongest when nothing is added.

I always use it straight because I like a thicker clearcoat and plan my baits accordingly. Epoxy engineers say it's strongest if you don't add anything. But if you feel the need to thin (I know it's cold right now where many guys are building their baits!) a few drops of denatured alcohol or lacquer thinner will not cause a disaster. If you like thinner coats, Envirotex Lite is a popular option (it contains solvent so will make solvent based colors run).

How about some masking tape? You can buy it in wide sizes. On the small bass baits I make, I often remove the white paper before marking so I can cut the lip more accurately. I sand down to an exact line with a Dremel and the white film has a tendency to fold over and obscure the line rather than being sanded off.

I flash dry Createx with a hair dryer and don't have a specific wait period before I clearcoat with Devcon. But I usually take a short break. I suspect acrylic is not fully dried/cured until its slight acidic odor goes away but any remaining moisture in the paint will not affect epoxy curing. I haven't noticed any related paint adhesion problems but a TU custom buillder who makes large batches might have more insight into that.

I think Blackjack's 'reducer/thinner/extender' solution is a good idea. I bought some Createx 4011 Reducer. It smells like alcohol and foams when you shoot it through an airbrush. So it obviously has water, alcohol and detergent in it. Wish I'd read the formula before I spent $10 on a pint of the stuff.

I'm like Dean; I bought a couple of kinds of adhesive stencils and found out 2 things: 1) even the frisket material that say "light tack" will lift paint or leave behind an adhesive residue when you peel it off. 2) you can only use it once. So I still use the adhesive frisket material but now never peel off the backing. I just hold it down on the lure with my thumb for sharp line details. Yeah, my thumb gets painted every time but acrylic washes off. And the stencil can be use quite a few times before it gets so gummed up with paint that it's toast.