BobP

Epoxy resin can crystallize like honey and if you heat it up, it will return to liquid. If the hardener gets too old and turns dark, that is more serious because it can cause the epoxy not to cure properly. But I've kept D2T in my unheated garage for more than a year without problems. But it's much better to store it in the house.

The only time I care about which kind of wood used to make a crank is when I'm getting ready to make another like it. And since I always make detailed notes on every batch of cranks I make, it's not an issue. The things to care about on the water: 1) does the crank perform to your expectations and 2) what do the bass think about it.

UV lights operate in specific wavelengths and UV cured polyesters require a specific spectrum of UV light to cure hard. You can get a mismatch and the finish won't cure, or may only partially cure. I use a UV nail light that works well - I just hang a couplle of lures inside the little light box. But it is a lot easier, simpler, and just as effective to sit the lures outside in the driveway on my still-running lure turner, which I used to level out the Solarez after brushing it on the lures.

No difference. You are just preventing the epoxy from moving on the bait so orientation while rotating is not relevant.

fishon, the wood sealers I use are Devcon Two Ton epoxy or Solarez high gloss uv cured polyester - neither is often found at local home centers. JMHO, there are a couple of problems with "wood sealers" per se. They are intended to seal wood grain before applying finishes, and that's all. If they are water based, I don't expect them to withstand water intrusion. If they are solvent based, I worry about compatibility with a solvent based topcoat like Dick Nite S81 moisture cured urethane, which is one of my favorite topcoats. I want to strengthen balsa baits as much as is practical during the finish process so I like to use a waterproof durable product as a sealer/undercoating/primer (choose your term). Either of my choices does that. I'm not saying you can't get away with a less durable, less waterproof sealer. If you only want to make the wood grain lay down, any sealer can do that, so it's player's choice. Everyone has to work out a finish regimen from the many available choices. Since there is no custom engineered set of undercoats/paint/topcoat designed for crankbaits, we have to find a set of coatings that do what we want and are compatible with each other. One of the simplest and most effective is to use epoxy as both an undercoating and a topcoat. Both D2T and Solarez are are cured finishes that are more or less chemically inert after application, so they work with many topcoats - epoxy, solvent based urethanes, etc, etc.

I regularly use the gloss Solarez as a sealer over raw wood and it works well. I just don't use it as a final topcoat because I don't like the wax blush or the low gloss and don't care to buff out topcoat after application when there are excellent alternatives available (DN or D2T).

Don't know if it matters but being a UV cured product, any Solarez sucked into the wood deep enough to avoid the UV light would not cure.

Musky, I brush the Solarez on the lure and let it rotate for a few minutes before curing it in sunlight or with a UV nail light. If you dipped, it may have gotten too thick a coating on it. I think you either need to let the excess drip off the lure for a longer period, or brush it on in a thinner coating before you rotate or cure the lure.

Muskie, over the last several years, I've gotten Dick Nite in quart size cans for around $50. Did you use the discount page that Dick maintains for the use of TU members? http://www.dicknite.com/TU_Lander.htm

fishon, I like baits that I can cast out and let sink to a prescribed depth before reeling them back to the boat. The running depth of a bait is one of the critical fishing parameters. The only issue I have with the Japanese spinbaits is that most of them are super tiny and I think they are hard for bass to see if you are fishing water that is more than slightly stained. But if you throw them on a spinning rod and 6lb test as they were designed to be fished, they will catch bass - particularly if they are feeding on small threadfin shad. Here in the SE, I have better luck with soft plastic swimbaits thrown on heavy jig heads because they offer a larger profile and a kicking tail action - and they can be fished just like a spinbait as far as sink rates and picking your retrieve depth. As a crankbait aficionado, I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I use them more than deep diving crankbaits these days. But their adaptability to fish any depth as you move around a lake makes them pretty attractive.

Most of us go through the same experience with airbrushing as you. You start out and find you can't shoot a fine line and wonder if it's your lack of control or just inherent problems with your paint or airbrush. Well, it's all of the above. Fine lines require good trigger control + specific airbrush settings and technique + paint thinning. And most important, plenty of practice - especially if you hope to get it right on both sides of a bait. I basically gave up trying to freehand fine lines years ago. Instead I rely on templates. They can look "too defined" if you don't also learn how to use fine shading to blend them into the overall color scheme. But they are a reliable way to get detail on a bait and they make it easy to get both sides of a bait painted the same way. Do they look as good as some of the masterpieces of freehand airbrush art you see on some of the baits here on TU? Sorry, no. But it's the best many of us ham handed painters can produce and you can still make baits to be proud of with this method.

I haven't seen any yet and guess it takes awhile for the KO makers to decide whether a spy bait is popular enough to begin turning out versions. Haven't had much luck with them fishing for largemouth but caught a bunch of smallmouth on Duo Realis Spinbait 80's in Ontario this fall.

The comments on haywire vs barrel twists on wire are interesting. I used to use barrel twists because I did them literally with my fingers on 190# stainless saltwater leader wire. When I switched to soft temper stainless wire, it was just easier and neater to use vise grip pliers and do haywire twists. The end product was also a little more uniform in shape and it was easier to size a drill bit for the holes in which I epoxy the hardware. I believe that mechanically, the barrel twist presents more glue area and thus is probably stronger than the haywire, if the glue coverage is 100%. But I've built more than a thousand bass crankbaits over the years and I've never once had an epoxied hook hanger or line tie pull out - regardless of which method I used. So to me there's not much practical reason to argue either way. I think a more interesting question is this: Do you really need to thru-wire bass baits at all? My experience has been that I can build in balsa without thru-wiring and end up with a bait that will be as durable, in a practical sense, as a thru-wired bait. Yes, the undercoating and topcoating need to be first class to prevent water intrusion which is the primary reason why most wood baits eventually fail. And I will make the screw eyes longer than in a hardwood bait. But as long as the finish lasts, I've never had the installed hardware pull out of a bait. You want to smack your balsa bait on the water to clear weeds off the trebles? If so you will destroy it whether the bait is thru-wired or not. I have nothing against thru-wiring. I just think that it is not necessarily right to think you MUST thru-wire if you build in balsa. JMHO

This is really good news and those of us who have spent hours searching site after site on the internet trying to find white translucent G-10 in hobby quantities will be very happy if LPO begins stocking it. Kudos to Curt and Ben! Don't know about you guys but I build baits with a wide variety of lip shapes/sizes and I like G-10 board for baits designed for cover contact, especially rock cover. I have to 'roll my own' lips out of G-10 and it is super hard to find online.

Michael's craft stores sells Envirotex Lite (aka ETEX here on TU) epoxy. It is a "table top/decoupage" epoxy that levels well and maintains its clarity well. There are other table top epoxies, sold at various outlets. The limitation with table top epoxies is that they contain solvents which thin the mixture considerably and also lengthen the hardening times. So you may need multiple coats to get the coating thickness you want and each coat will require several hours of rotation to harden to a non-sag state, compare to a glue epoxy like Devcon Two Ton which requires only about an hour of rotation to non-sag state.

The metric system of weights is something you either grow up with so it becomes second nature and inherent in your thought and evaluation mental processes - or it doesn't. I know what a gallon looks like, what it weghs, etc but the same is not true for a liter. So I think in gallons, in ounces, inches, etc and not in their metric analogs. It's how I make sense of the world. I know centimeters, liters, etc make math a lot easier but that really doesn't matter. As long as American adults are raised on our outdated system, I suspect it will persevere. I keep a metric to U.S. measurement calculator beside my workbench. But this old dog will never be taught to think in metric

One smart way to generate traffic is to contact the web masters of a couple of popular bass fishing sites (or whatever species you build for) and buy an ad about your contest. Lots more eyeballs that way. I think possibly the biggest bass fishing site right now is bassresource.com.

If you brush it, you need to get it on asap because it will begin to skin over quickly. If you're too slow, it will skin over before you get around the lure and will clump up on the brush, ruining the topcoat. I flood coat the lure with a brush loaded with DN, then hang the lure up so the excess will drip off the tail of the bait. It's almost like dipping the lure, you're just using a small amount of DN which you decanted from the storage can using the "tap the can" method to preserve your DN supply. You do not want to put it on a lure rotator lest it pool somewhere on the lure and bubble. This is almost as fast as dipping and will give you the same results.

The typical prop usually sits on a cup washer which you can source from the same place you buy the props (lurepartsonline.com for one). I do not use screw eyes on my baits for several reasons and prefer to build them with hard temper ss wire. But it's hard to size the wire so the props will turn freely without too much blade slop, which makes it hard for the prop to start up. For a free turning prop, I do the following: buy some buzzbait rivets from the same source. They will pressure fit neatly into the prop hole and then you can cut off the excess length on the rivet shaft with a Dremel tool cutting disk. You want to trim the shaft of the rivet so you aren't piling too much hardware onto the shaft and making it longer than necessary. Works great and the props will start turning easily every time you twitch the bait.

I put a drop of fine reel oil where the trigger interfaces the needle slide and another drop in the valve stem. No problems with it getting in the acrylic paint so far and it does make the trigger work a little slicker.

I seal/undercoat wood baits after all the hardware (except the lip) is installed. That includes balsa baits. It would be hard for me to split a balsa bait to lay in a through-wire after coating it with epoxy, which I use as an undercoating. Also, I want every little bit of the bait to be sealed before painting it. And I don't see any need to seal twice.

Stronger is stronger, but I consider all this in the light that you also fish with line that will break at a few pounds of strain and that rod guides will typically pull off a rod blank at less than 20 lbs of force. So if my hangers will hold at above those strains, it's really gilding the lily to demand they hold out at huge strain weights. I think any or all of the methods described will work just fine. I've fished and destroyed a lot of wood crankbaits in my time but have never had a hook hanger or line tie fail. Maybe I need to hook much larger fish than 10 lb largemouths!

Like RayburnGuy, I undercoat balsa with a slow cure glue epoxy like Devcon Two Ton, sand it lightly to remove its gloss, paint the lure, then topcoat with the same stuff. Solarez uv cured polyester resin is another good undercoating because it is similar to epoxy in performance and quick to use - but I don't use it for a topcoat because of its tendency to develop a white wax blush. Using epoxy is a "twofer" - one product that works for both undercoating and topcoating and performs well in both roles, especially on balsa. Keeps things simple. Using superglue works well to harden balsa but frankly, I don't like the mess or the added expense. It ain't cheap. I've used propionate pellets on balsa and it also works OK. It's propionate cellulose and I dissolved it in acetone. There was a little flurry of using plastic cups instead of the propionate here on TU a few years ago. Some guys thought it worked OK. Many couldn't get the plastic cups to dissolve. Some reported that the coating cracked on the lure after drying. I think Rapala used propionate once upon a time. They've undoubtedly moved on to a better industrial process. If you want to try it, be sure the prop solution is very thin and use 5-10 dips in the stuff to build up a decent coating thickness. Frankly, I think there are less labor intensive ways to get an undercoating that works at least as well (e.g., epoxy). Airbrushes: Most of them work just fine. My favorite is the Iwata Revolution series, which are value priced and bullet proof compared to other high end airbrush models. I use a Revolution B brush 95% of the time.

I usually mix up 2 cc of epoxy for each bass sized bait I'm topcoating (1 cc each of resin and hardener). A little more if i'm doing only one bait, and I slightly thin the mix with denatured alcohol. You want to err on the side of mixing too much if there is any doubt. Nothing worse than topcoating a bait and finding out you didn't mix enough. And scraping out the last bit of epoxy from the bottom of the container is where you find the stuff that should have been mixed better, if there is any.

I like the UV cure polyester a lot but the white wax blush on the surface of the topcoat is a killer for me - I just can't stand it. If Solarez now has a product without the blush, it would be a big step. Here's hoping.