BobP

It may help to strain it through a piece of nylon hosiery.

I use a scroll saw to shape baits and cut lip slots. A “standard” blade has a kerf that exactly fits 1/16” G10 but is too thin for polycarbonate Lexan lips, so you have to cut them double. Frankly, I don’t see it as a problem. Since I use Rod Bond paste epoxy to glue lips, if the slot ends up a little ragged or oversize, the paste fills the extra space up and it doesn’t matter.

I started lure building because I bought high priced balsa baits only to have them fail after only a few hours of fishing. But I never had a bass break one. They all failed because of water infiltration, which I think is the primary failure point of all wooden crankbaits. So when I build, I pay most attention to making a tough waterproof finish. If they can’t break the finish, they can’t do more harm and thru-wiring is irrelevant.

I build bass lures but my buddy trolls for stripers and I build balsa trolling cranks for him. Same construction methods as my bass cranks. Pound for pound, stripers fight twice as hard as largemouth. No failures yet over 15 years of striper fishing. Just like all you guys, my opinion about thru-wiring is informed by my fishing experience. That’s mine. Yours may vary.

I exclusively build bass lures and if a bass ever breaks one of my non-thru-wired balsa baits I will gratefully and cheerfully salute the beast as he swims off with half my lure in its mouth. Hundreds of crankbaits, hundreds of bass, I’m still waiting. I don’t think thru-wiring offers added strength to a lure compared to well designed and installed hardwire. But build crankbaits however you think is best for the species you target.

I think thru-wire is mainly an artifact of large scale lure manufacturing simplification by Rapala and not a quality based decision. How many times has a bass fisherman had a fish break the body of a Balsa crankbait but had the catch saved by a thru-wire? Not often enough to worry about.

Quite a few commercial crankbait makers use siphon feed bottle brushes. Hobby builders? Not so many. If you paint batches of lures with the same color scheme, a set of siphon brushes or a single brush with multiple bottles makes good sense.

Though you didn’t say, I’m gonna assume you are using a SLOW cure type of epoxy, such as a slow cure Devcon Two Ton glue or a craft decoupage epoxy like Envirotex Lite (aka Etex). There are dozens of epoxy brands with different formulas, viscosities, cure times, etc. You want to avoid fast cure 5 minute cure epoxies. They are not waterproof, cure too fast to level properly and yellow quickly. Epoxy and UV cured polyester tend to be thicker coatings, MCU tends to be thinner. I have no data on hardness and scratch resistance among the recommended coatings but just to me, MCU SEEMS to be tougher and slicker than the others. MCU = moisture cured urethane.

I don’t know what’s available in SA but there are 3 clears that I consider tough enough for crankbaits. Epoxy, UV cured polyester resin, and moisture cured urethane. Of these, UV cured resin is the fastest by far. Each has pluses and minuses and each requires a specific application and curing procedure. To my mind, none of them are really suitable for dipping because they are either too viscous (UV resin) or too susceptible to contaminating finish you want to store after dipping ( Moisture cured urethane). I brush on all of the clears. The easiest to apply is moisture cured urethane which I quickly flood coat on a lure and hang it to drip dry. But UV resin is also attractive because its cure only takes a few minutes in total. All that said, I still use epoxy pretty often just because I have it around and have used it for decades.

For line ties in the nose, the closer it is to the lip surface, the harder and wider the action of the bait will be. Of course like Vodkaman says, there are multiple factors in designing how a bait will operate. Your lip angle is quite aggressive and the lip itself seems fairly long, both of which impart more action to the bait. Too much? Depends on testing and how buoyant the bait is, or in other words, how much and where you placed the ballast.

I use lacquer thinner. Dip the brush, agitate, blot brush on cloth, repeat. I use nylon bristle flat artist brushes. The finer bristles pop epoxy bubbles as I apply it. And the brushes last for years.

I build baits in batches of 6 and I use Rod Bond paste epoxy, the original slow cure variety, to glue in hardware and lips. It’s strong and waterproof and stays where you put it. Plus, I can mix up a batch and easily install 6 lips before it begins to harden. For lips, I push the paste into the slot with a thin wire until its filled with epoxy, then push in a dry lip. The excess squeezes out of the slot at the rear of the lip and is easy to wipe clean. Do not butter the lip before insertion as that causes a mess on the front of the lip. The slow cure time (6 hrs to begin, 24 hrs to finish) allows a lot of time to tweak lip positions, which I’m finicky enough to appreciate. I cut two slots in the rear of all lips before insertion to form “key” and improve strength.

Solarez is intended for surf board finishing. The wax flakes it contains and the white blush that it develops doesn’t matter much on a large white surf board, but it does matter to many lure finishers. I couldn’t use it for that reason and defaulted to using it as a quick strong waterproof undercoating, for which it was excellent. My quart of Solarez eventually hardened and was thrown away. Jmho, if you want a uv resin that hardens to a clear coating, you want a “doming” uv resin. The only two I know of are Alumi-uv and inexpensive Chinese casting uv resins sold on Amazon, etc. alumi-uv has excellent reputation, but it is rather expensive. The cheaper Chinese stuff works ok but the bottle I have takes longer (30 minutes) to cure under my uv nail light. I’ll try sunlight on my next batch of lures to see if that works better, since sunlight has all wavelengths of uv while uv lamps don’t.

A lot of TUers have tried Solarez. It’s very cheap for a uv resin but has one drawback that caused many of us to drop it, namely that the surface cure is accomplished by wax flakes in the resin. After the cure is complete, you often have a white blush in the finish. Some guys don’t mind it, some do. Alumi-uv and the Chinese craft resins you see on Amazon are a different type of uv resin and don’t use wax flakes.

Don, i agree with 21XDC about using a moisture cured urethane (MCU) topcoat but think I would opt for Dick Nite Fishermun’s Lurecoat instead of KBS. With Dick Nite, I’ve had the topcoat penetrate through the acrylic latex color coat and form a bond directly with the metal on spoons. It would be even more durable if applied over solvent based lacquer colors. 21XDC also brings up a point you should beware of regarding safety. You need to wear a mask rated for solvent protection if you shoot solvent based coatings. Aside from the very flammable mist that’s present, the chemicals in topcoats are often very poisonous. I wouldn’t dream of using anything other than MCU on a spinner blade or jig head. It’s the perfect topcoat for them: thin, tough, and non yellowing. Once upon a time I repainted a reel. It was a PITA to do and the new paint (auto aerosol colors) started chipping pretty quickly. Honestly, I think you’ll try it and probably decide as I did that the end product just isn’t worth the work and time required to do it.

For a line tie on the lip, many guys start with the tie point 45-50 % of the distance between the nose and the end of the lip. From there, if you move the tie toward the nose, you will get a harder, wider action. But go too far and the lure will blow out or circle in the water. If you have a similar commercial bait, you can often shorten the test-retest cycle by starting at the same point. The lip angle and placement of the ballast also affect the bait’s action.

Maybe it doesn’t matter which waterproof/gas proof coating you use under the foil. I use epoxy. I used to use uv resin (Solarez) because it was cheap and fast but my bottle went bad and I didn’t want it as a topcoat, so switched back to epoxy. I have Chinese brand uv resin and MCU too, but I’ve been using epoxy for decades, so... Mark has been building closed cell pvc lures for many years. That seems similar to resin with micro balloons to me and if he uses nail polish, I think it would work too. If you are considering superglue just because its fast I think that’s a mistake since you want a coating that yields a smooth paintable surface by filling in all the surface voids. Jmho

I wouldn't be concerned with the tape, but with what’s under it. Raw wood? Foam? Expanded pvc trim? I make wood baits and foil them. There has to be a waterproof/gas proof coating under the foil or any heating of the lure will cause outgassing and bubbled foil (whether heated by you when finishing the lure or by the user storing the lure in a hot compartment).

When I tried it, Solarez always cured hard within 5 minutes. But the end product isn’t always a slick hard dry surface because a small part of the Solarez resin can end up as a liquid on the surface of the coating. I think if you wipe the coating with some alcohol it will resemble what you’re looking for more closely.

It takes about 30 minutes inside a nail uv cure box to harden the Chinese resin I have. Different resins are designed to be hardened at different UV wavelengths and a given lamp may or may not work well on certain resins, but most will eventually get the job done. I’d give it an alcohol wipe like Travis recommends after giving it more time under the light. I don’t think you’ll have this problem with Alumi-UV, but the Chinese resin is much less expensive. and yes, curing resin in sunlight is a good way to go since the sun puts out a wide range of UV.

I also view crankbaits as expendable and I don’t have customers who expect (unreasonably) that they last forever. That doesn’t mean I want them to disintegrate an hour into a hot crankbait bite though. I undercoat with epoxy and topcoat with various stuff - MCU, UV resin, or epoxy. So my baits have 2 tough waterproof coatings. That’s enough for me. But all of us are “rolling their own” and if you want 10 layers of finish on your bait for some reason, well, no fault, no foul.

I use water based acrylic paint. The truth is, it lasts as long as the topcoat you put over it. If the topcoat is cracked or chipped, water can infiltrate the paint, cause it to expand and push the finish off the lure. You can avoid that by using lacquer based paint but it is much more toxic than water based. Most hobbyists and small batch custom builders use water based paint. It works fine for most crankbaits, most of the time.

You got me. I also have a bottle of Chinese uv resin, about a year old. It’s still the same viscosity liquid as when new. When I used it as clearcoat last week, it took about 40 minutes in my fingernail uv curing box to properly harden. Not much longer than it took when fresh, but maybe slightly longer. I think the longer cure time may just be typical for Chinese resins. The Alumi-UV resin reportedly cures in a few minutes. It’s also much more expensive, so “player’s choice”.

Anything will work, just depending on what qualities are important to you. Personally, I only use waterproof undercoatings to increase the durability of the lures I make, and in my experience NO water based coating is actually waterproof. I keep several kinds of waterproof clearcoats (epoxy, MCU, uv cured polyester) on hand and I use one of them for undercoating. But most solvent based coatings lIke shellac, spar varnish, urethane, etc can also be used. But water based primer? Not for me.

Don’t know if there are better ways, but I tension a thick rubber band over the nose, adjust it until it looks symmetrical, and mark the slot with a Sharpie.