BobP

As far as number of coats, it depends on how truly solid you want the base coat to look before adding colors. Even with Superhide, I always use more than one coat, giving the basecoat a hard look under strong light to ensure a pure white base. That's undoubtedly overkill considering the multiple shots of color the lure will end up with, but I mostly paint wood and it's harder to cover wood grain than it is to basecoat a plastic lure.

Haven't tried the Autoair. Several companies including Polytrasnpar make a "cover white" paint that has increased pigment to hide whatever it is painted over. The Super Hide White is one. I like it because it covers quickly and dries very quickly with a hair dryer to a hard slick surface. I think it has some kind of additive to promote its performance features.

I just went to my local hobby shop and bought the cheapest calligraphy pen they had, which was a plastic stick with a couple of fine point nibs. It has lasted more than 10 yrs and couldn't have cost more than a couple of bucks. Dip it in Createx black and you're in business.

I always found it hard to trace a lip form from an original, so switched to taking very detailed measurements and replicating the form with a freeware CAD program on my computer. If you're careful you get a symmetrical lip template you can trust to be more accurate. Then you have to worry about how accurately you can make the body of the lure in terms of shape, size, material used, overall weight, and how the original is balanced by the ballast location and amount. You need to be pretty finnacky to get all this right and end up with a lure that behaves like the original. Small differences mean a lot when copying a lure. Getting the original X-rayed never hurts. Fortunately, the vast majority of custom wood baits use a simple ballasting scheme that is easy to reproduce. Barring all this exactitude, you can sometimes get a similar performance by copying the shape, overall weight, and lip design of an original. Sometimes.

I use a hand twisted soft temper stainless screw eye for a line tie on the lip, usually .041" wire. Make the screw eye. Drill a hole in the lip that will be a tight fit for its shank. Bend the screw eye at 90 degrees to the shank and force it through the hole. when done right, you end up with a lip and line tie with its shank running back to the end of the lip underneath. Cut a little groove in the bottom center of the lip slot to hold the line tie's shank and epoxy the assembly into the lure. Soft temper stainless wire works well for this because it's easy to shape and bend accurately with simple hand tools. If there's any give in the line tie after installation, you can run a bead of epoxy topcoat along the shank to anchor it more firmly to the bottom of the lip. The soft stainless wire makes it easier to tune the bait and is quite strong. There are all kinds of ways to put a line tie in a lip. All of them work well, this is just the one I favor.

Like Dale says above, if the lure is poplar or similar hard wood I wouldn't see any need to use a thru-wire. You can twist your own screw eyes from stainless wire and make them any length you think is appropriate, then simply drill a hole and epoxy them in the lure. I've never had one pull out even on hard fighting striped bass. It saves a bunch of hassle compared to a thru-wire frame. JMHO

It might work for awhile but I'd reserve duo snap line ties to metal lips because the friction would probably erode and break the circuit board eventually.

Basically, as long as your finish remains totally waterproof, anything you use as a filler is OK as long as it doesn't shrink or expand due to temperature much differently than the wood surrounding it. if your finish begins to leak water, no wood bait that will last long. Epoxy putty works well to fill wood gaps and it hardens in a few minutes.

I get polycarbonate (aka Lexan) sheets from McMaster-Carr on line. They have a wide variety of thicknesses and ship it in convenient 12x12" sheets at a good price.

What wire size is best depends on the type of wire you order. I use soft temper stainless wire for all of my hangers/line ties and the .041" size works great for that. Easy to bend accurately with hand tools and it's plenty strong enough for bass baits. If you're bending .042" hard temper stainless, that's a whole 'nother thing.

Most of my favorites are taxidermy paints. I like that you can shoot it without thinning. I've used various brands including Polytranspar. Their Superhide White is the best color undercoat white paint I've found.

Every little thing you do to a crankbait affects its performance one way or another. I've never applied anything to a circuit board lip to protect it from fraying on rocks and have been satisfied with its durability. I have painted epoxy on a badly worn plastic lip to improve its look and it looked worse afterward. MCU will work fine on plastic lips to clarify them when scratched. It will not Bond well to polycarbonate. I don't think you'll find a coating that's tougher than the fiberglass and phenolotic resin of circuit board and think anything you try will wear off pretty quickly. To me, it's trying to gild the lily. Unnecessary and won't help the look or performance of the lip. If you are concerned about its durability, you can make the lip from a more durable circuit board like G-11 (at higher cost) but G-10 works fine for me. You will never make a crankbait that will not wear during hard fishing; it just goes with the territory. Fortunately, we can build more!

For equal coating thicknesses, I'd give the nod to KBS in terms of toughness. As far as weight goes, I find that any of the popular finishes on a typical 2 1/2" bass crank weighs about .02 ounces including the paint. That's not much to worry about unless you are building a suspending crank, in which case you need to customize the bait's ballast anyway.

No, not too cold but it might be a little uncomfortable. It's a good idea to use a hair dryer after each color to speed the process along. Not a good idea to shoot wet paint over wet paint. You want the lure to be bone dry before you apply the topcoat.

That's a very informative link about saltwater plug finishes. But it's worth pointing out that saltwater lures operate in an environment populated by toothy critters that we freshwater guys do not experience to the same degree. I build bass baits fished in freshwater. No bluefish. Rarely pike. Rarely musky. Occasionally small pickerel. If you want a simple, inexpensive, and fairly quick finish regimen that will last for years on a bass bait: coat the raw wood with 30 minute epoxy like Devcon Two Ton. Lightly sand it to remove the gloss and then paint the lure. Topcoat with the same epoxy. Done and dusted. Worried that your lure will be chewed on by a toothy critter? Put on two coats of epoxy topcoat. Want something that will penetrate and strengthen the wood before applying the epoxy undercoating? Rub on some liquid superglue before the first epoxy. it's easy to get wrapped around the axle about finishes, but it doesn't have to happen.

When copying a commercial bait, I want the final weight of the copy to be identical to the original. You need a cheap digital scale to do this. Weigh the original and as you build the copy, add up the components and subtract that from the original's weight to determine the amount of ballast needed. For medium sized bass baits, I estimate the weight of an epoxy finish to be .02 oz. using this method, you can build a copy that is within .01-.02 oz of the original. However, it should be noted that the bait may not necessarily swim exactly the same as the original due to the differences in weight distribution of a solid wood or pvc body compared to a plastic shell original. But it will be the close.

Dale, yes CB comes in a pretty wide array of colors. The translucent white is the most popular. As far as observability goes, I've built deep divers with huge bills using CB and as far as I can tell, they catch largemouth smallmouth spotted and striped bass as well as Lexan billed baits of the same design in clear water. Are trout different? Dunno.

My choice would be circuit board. It has better rebound when fished through rock cover, which is one of the main reasons it became popular as a lip material. It is stiffer than polycarbonate. I use 1/32" thickness on small bass lures.

Ben, I think the last port trailer companies were Uncle Josh and Super Port, and both of them have stopped production as far as I know. You can see a few jars of Uncle Josh still for sale on Ebay at exorbitant prices. I actually have 5-6 jars of Uncle Josh and Super Port still sitting in my garage fridge. All are more than 5-7 yrs old but still OK as far as I can tell. Various colors and sizes. If your buddy is interested, send me a PM and I'll supply specifics.

Ben, I think Dick Nite paints are lacquer based and his MCU is compatible with that. I'd be leery of using MCU on enamel until I tried a test piece.

I've heard of spraying auto clearcoats and moisture cured urethane on crankbaits but have not heard of spraying epoxy. Not that it would be impossible if you thinned the epoxy to an extreme extent and used an automotive type sprayer with a large nozzle, but it seems to me that would be more trouble than it's worth since the other coatings would be less trouble and would perform better. Maybe someone else has tried it and can comment on practicality and results?

Tapps and Blazers have a moderately long coffin shaped bill with the line tie on the bill. Since Lohr packaging doesn't state a model name, you have to judge for yourself whether it resembles an original Tapp/Blazer. You can get actual WEC Tapps from Peeper's Baits online. Tennessee Tuffy Baits also makes a Tapp style bait and they are excellent quality, competitively priced, and have very good action in my experience.

The only rod I wrap left is a flipping stick because I use ny left hand to grasp the line when flipping. Otherwise, it doesn't matter but I wrap right on all my other spiral rods, no reason, it just seems "right" to wrap that way for me. I've never experienced any line stacking to left or right on a reel spool when using any of the spiral wrap schemes, so that's a non-issue. Some of the early spiral schemes (Roberts?) used a slightly offset first guide to correct for any possible stacking but that has not proven to be an issue, at least for bass rods.

PVC trim board has advantages and disadvantages, IMO. Good: it is fairly uniform in density and is naturally waterproof. It is durable and does not require any special build procedures, like balsa can. Bad: wood offers different species which have different densities that may be better suited for specific bait types. Also, some guys would rather deal with wood sawdust than PVC sawdust, which is electrically charged and sticks to everything when sanded. You can make crankbaits from lots of different materials and most of us eventually settle on basic materials that suit our bait designs, work habits, available tools, and various prejudices we pick up over the years. There's no perfect answer. You just have to explore for yourself and decide which materials make the best crankbait for you.

I order polycarbonate sheet from McMaster Carr online. Good prices, plus they carry other stuff like circuit board material and wire.