BobP

If you want a particular lip shape and size, you often won't find a commercial version that exactly matches your need. Not to worry. Just buy a sheet of 1/16" thick polycarbonate (aka Lexan) and cut any shape/size lip you want from it. I draw up a lip design with a free CAD program I found online (Powerdraw). When you print the design on an ink jet printer, the program automatically prints the lip shape to the right dimensions, which is a big plus. Doing it on a computer also guarantees the lip will be symmetrical, which is essential. But you can draw lips by hand and simply cut them out with scissors for a template too. Then use your template to trace the outline of the lip onto your Lexan sheet and cut it out with metal snips, leaving a mm or so outside the line to be sanded down with a Dremel sanding cylinder to final shape. Shine up the edges of the lip with a Dremel felt polishing cylinder. Voila, you have your lip. It takes about 10 minutes to cut and polish a lip with this method - which is a reasonable amount of time and effort if you're a hobby builder. There are various sources for polycarbonate sheet. I buy mine online from mcmaster.com but your local home center or glass shop may also carry it

I think the HJ model listed on the website is a Husky Jerk. Body roll can be enhanced by putting the ballast higher in the lure than normal. I think the higher front ballast in the X-ray of the HJ may be a case in point. That said, jerkbaits to me are one of the hardest type lures to get to work exactly the way you want. I fish with a box full of Lucky Craft and Megabass jerkbaits. I'd build my own if it weren't such a chore to get them right and I consider a $8 Husky Jerk a bargain lure compared to much of the competition.

Scrubs, I find the Got-Chas cast very well. They are used by pier and surf fishermen on the coast where wind is always a consideration. However, they are very different from Dieter's topwater pipe lure design in that they work as subsurface jerkbaits with a wide side-to-side jump. Their head piece is lead and they come in several sizes. The only complaint I have with them is the treble hooks are not replaceable and they quickly corrode in salt water. But they do have the best action of any of the similar saltwater jerkbaits I've tried - and they catch fish!

I'm gonna assume you mean Spro KNOCKOFF blanks, not the real thing. I've seen Little John knockoffs at either Predator or Bustin Bass Baits.

The stuff you're looking for is Pledge "Tile & Vinyl Floor FINISH with Future Shine". I don't use it because it has some downsides: it's scented, which I don't like. It will also weld your airbrush needle to the packing nut if you don't clean your airbrush carefully after using it - I had to use pliers to get the needle out of my airbrush after some dried in the barrel. I recommend you mix it in your paint immediately before spraying, not mixing a whole bottle of paint with it and storing it because sometimes, with some paints, it will cause the pigment to drop out of suspension into a very hard deposit on the bottom of the bottle, ruining the bottle. It's a strong acrylic finish and sprays nicely. Some guys use it as an acrylic clear over a paint scheme if they are having problems with solvent based topcoats causing their paint to wrinkle. It will save you some on paint, if you're into that. I'm not, so would rather go with another thinner on the rare occasions that I think I need one.

They definitely dampen the action of a crankbait. At the same time, they are an added attractor. Sometimes that's good, sometimes not. I use them on most of my LC and Megabass jerkbaits but I keep extra un-feathered trebles to change them out if they won't bite it. I tend to agree with llokkii about post frontal conditions, where a bait with muted action can be better.

Those are very similar to Got-Cha lures that are very popular here on the east coast for bluefish and mackerel - except that the front slope on the Got-Cha is in the opposite direction, which helps keep the lure underwater when it is fished like a jerkbait.

I buy a bulk package of chicken feathers at Michael's craft store. Some of them are unusable and most have to be trimmed but I get enough out of a package to do a couple of dozen trebles for several bucks. You can color them with sharpies if wanted and they hold up as well as any other feather species.

I just wipe it down with denatured alcohol to remove any residual oil/dirt, then lay on a color basecoat of Polytranspar Superhide White water based acrylic paint.

Can't speak about musky baits but my favorite wire for bass baits is .041" diameter soft temper stainless steel. It forms very easily by hand and is strong enough when bent into a small diameter hook hanger or line tie that it will bend only when you want it to - such as when you want to tune your crankbait without breaking the finish on the nose of a bait. McMaster-Carr sells it online in 1/4lb spools for around $7. Soft temper brass is softer than stainless, copper is even softer. Both of them corrode.

I think color pattern is a tertiary attractor, after (and less critical than) depth and action. That doesn't mean it's unimportant though. I think EVERYTHING is important when fishing a crankbait. Any little thing I can do to up my chances - I'm gonna do.

Annealing is heating a metal up and then cooling it slowly so that it becomes softer. Tempering is the opposite - quick cooling.

There's still considerable UV light hitting Earth on a cloudy day. To cure Solarez, I brush it on, put it on a lure turner for a few minutes to level out, then set the lure turner outside and run it for 15 minutes more to harden the resin. It has always worked, even on partially cloudy days - I just don't like the milky appearance it gives me for topcoats.

The Duo Realis spinbaits have counter-rotating blades. They're small and light.

While they say you can cure uv resin with this or that light source, the stuff usually has to be exposed to particular wavelengths of UV light. I'd try exposing it to sunlight to see if that might give you a harder coating.

If the MCU is penetrating the paint on copper blades, it's penetrating the paint on other metal blades too. To me, penetration is desirable because the MCU forms a bond with the underlying metal and creates a monolithic waterproof finish that is much more durable than if the paint had not been penetrated. Unmodified acrylic paint would soak up water at a scratch point and delaminate the finish from the blade otherwise. A buddy of mine who coats blades with MCU slings the excess MCU off after he dips them. When I use MCU, it's Dick NIte S81, which is pretty thin stuff and I never had a problem with drops remaining on the blade after dipping. As far as spraying both sides of the blade - I would if the non-painted side is bare metal, so it wouldn't tarnish.

Kudos to Jim. This is the kind of fishing-based attitude I appreciate in a retailer.

Actually I don't care what a guy chooses to make baits from. I figure "Beauty is as beauty does". If it runs great and catches the heck out of bass, it's a great lure. Period. I just couldn't resist tweaking Mark when given the chance! I prefer working in wood. My best baits have all been wood and I don't care for all the electrically charged PVC dust hanging around the garage and my sinuses. And personally I think "a need for speed" is not conducive to me making the best baits I can. God knows,I have too many crankbaits hanging around the garage as is!

Hey, wait a minute! "If you're just starting out, and don't have any bad habits yet, try using PVC trimboard" So Mark, using wood is a bad habit? Sheesh, you Southern Cali guys! "Life in the Fast Lane. Everything, all the time."

Your compressor is fine, better than many of the "airbrush" compressors since it will run an airbrush for a long time before it recycles and you'll be using it in your garage, where noise is not an issue. As for airbrushes, I like Iwata for their overall quality and the one I pick up most often when doing crankbaits is the Revolution BR, a very solid airbrush with the right sized tip (.3mm) and small gravity feed cup which is big enough for crankbaits. It will do anything you need a brush to do when painting a crankbait. A bonus is the Revolution sells for around $80, making it a bargain. The trigger on a dual action airbrush controls both the air flow and the amount of paint dispensed into the air flow: push down for more air, pull back for more paint. In a single action brush, the trigger only controls the air flow over a venturi orifice that sucks up the paint. I paint in the garage and since I shoot only water based acrylic paints, ventilation is not much of a concern. I don't use a box or a ventilation system, just prop some newspaper behind my work area to catch the overspray. If you want to use a box, you have to clean it regularly because airbrush paint tends to dry to a dust as soon as it is shot. If you plan to use any solvent based coatings through your airbrush, then a solvent rated breathing mask and a combustion proof ventilation fan are necessary.

To me it's mostly about buoyancy and at 23 lb/cu ft nominal density, basswood makes a good medium density body. White and red cedar have similar densities but basswood shapes and sands so well that I prefer it over other hardwoods.

Awhile back, a TU poster reported that epoxy has a density of 1.1 while water has a density of 1.0 - so yes, epoxy will add weight to a lure and ANYTHING you do to a lure changes its performance to some extent. I never use more than one coat of Devcon applied at room temperature - which makes for a fairly thick coating compared to most other topcoats. That said, I don't hesitate to use Devcon on a topwater bait because most of them have enough buoyancy to easily overcome the added weight. If that's a concern, I switch to a different topcoat like Dick Nite Moisture Cured Urethane or a solvent based concrete sealer. I don't heat epoxy once it's on the lure because bitter experience taught me that the more gimmicks I try, the more screw-ups I'm gonna have. a little patience is a great asset to crankbait building. Envirotex Lite is an epoxy pre-mixed with a solvent so that it can easily flow out on a flat surface and expel air bubbles. Flexcoat is a rod guide epoxy and it is formulated to go on thin so that it penetrates the threads on a guide wrap before beginning to harden. All of these are two part epoxies and for most guys, dipping lures in epoxy is a big waste of the product. Flexcoat or another rod guide epoxy can be found at online sources that sell rod building supplies, like mudhole.com or Jann's Netcraft. All the back and forth about new topcoats here on TU has been great, but I think it boils down to this: There is no perfect topcoat for every lure, for every builder. You have to choose according to the specific performance you are looking for and the specific process by which you want to build your crankbaits. And you have to realize that there are going to be trade-offs regardless of which topcoat you choose - Faster but not as durable; harder to store but more durable, dipable but expensive, durable but slow to cure, etc etc.

Tony, the 20 min versus 30 min blurb is just a rough guestimate of how long it takes for those glue epoxies to begin forming a bond - it really has nothing to do, per se, with brushing time. You just have to try any slow cure epoxy for yourself to find out how much brush time you get with it at particular temperatures. You can mix in a few drops of denatured alcohol if you want to extend the brush time by a minute or two. For me, Devcon with a few drops of DA is brushable for 3 bass baits and I prefer doing only 2 baits from one mix so I don't have to hurry. More speed = more screw ups and I've learned to be patient.

I think VMC probably has better tempering on their best grade trebles compared to the old bronze VMC hooks I used to buy. I used to be able to cut a bronze VMC treble's hook eye with cutters, bend it out to fit it on a blade bait, and bend it back with no problem. I haven't tried that recently but cutting/bending the wire on a Gamakatsu hook is definitely out - it will break every time due to its harder tempering. Of course, harder tempering means no bent out hooks and the points stay sharper longer than less tempered hooks - which is why I use Gamakatsu on my personal-use baits. I haven't had any complaints about the black VMC trebles I put on baits that I give away to friends and family though. They tend not to look gift horses in the mouth! But I think you get what you pay for in treble hooks and with Gamy's I don't have to worry about sharpness or strength.

I've done a few resin baits and found they are similar to wood in that if you heat them up, the air inside expands and tries to force its way out - including bubbling the paint unless you put a barrier coat between the resin and the paint. I used epoxy for that. I flash dry Createx and other acrylic paint with a hair dryer, just long enough to make the water gloss disappear from the paint before I go to the next color. You aren't really going to "set" acrylic paint unless you heat it past the melting point of the acrylic, which is way more heat than you want to be applying to any crankbait. The resin baits I painted were Alumite with micro-balloons and had numerous small pits in the surface that were invisible until they screwed up the finish, so an undercoating was necessary. Different coatings have different resistance to heating and internal pressure so it becomes a question of which you choose and how much heat you apply. Epoxy worked for me, other coatings might work for you depending on how you finish the bait.