BobP

Hey, I'm all over any topcoat that's easy to apply (especially dipping), has good gloss, no storage issues, and is DURABLE. What I haven't seen enough of yet are posts about how durable the concrete sealers are. I don't want a topcoat that is not as tough ON THE WATER as epoxy, moisture cured urethane, or UV cured polyester. So how about it, guys... what is your experience in this area with Gst or any other brand of sealer? Have you ever seen it cloud up after immersion, indicating that it has softened and absorbed water? How has it performed against impact and hook rash? Any "Gotchas" while applying it to lures or fishing them later? Inquiring minds want to know!

Mark, you really aren't taping off that much. Take the reel COMPLETELY apart and about all you need to tape are the threads on the cast control and the handle shaft. The thing that takes forever is putting the reel back together after it's all done - if you aren't experienced.

Taping lips before clearcoating - I say don't do it, just dip a little past the nose of the bait so all the paint is covered. If you tape the lip, you have to remove it before the topcoat gets really hard or the tape will be glued to the lip. And handling a not-yet-dry bait to get the tape off is a good way to mar your finish.

The best I've found is dipping the lip in Dick Nite S81 moisture cured urethane - if it's plastic. It won't adhere to polycarbonate (Lexan) bills, and it's not cheap - but you did say "best". Some say you can clarify a bill by dipping it in acetone, which begins to dissolve the plastic. I've never tried that. Dipping the lip in Solarez UV cured polyester also might work but it is a rather thick topcoat. In my experience, whatever product you choose, you should dip rather than brush it on to avoid brush marks.

I really like the old round Ambassadeur ProMax reels from the early 70's and have several. The problem is the factory painted them with gray paint that quickly scratched, so I tried painting one - with poor results as noted above. If I decided to paint another (I never will), and I didn't want to try a 2 part catalyzed auto clearcoat, I think my next option would be Dick Nite S81 moisture cured urethane. Why? It's really tough when cured and it's REALLY THIN, which is an important feature when painting reel parts that have to fit back together after painting. I think it could be shot with an airbrush in several coats if I was careful (I've never tried spraying it but others here on the site reportedly have). My main concern would be whether or not to use a metal primer and if so, to find one that wouldn't react badly with the urethane - which contains solvents that are very reactive. My initial try with Dick Nite would be without a metal primer since I've found that, on spoons, if the Dick Nite is fresh, it will penetrate right into acrylic latex paint and form a good bond with the underlying metal surface, creating a durable monolithic finish. These are just my thoughts on the deal, shoved into your brain without any end-to-end testing. Maybe your robot should be screaming "DANGER, Will Robinson!". But there you go...

I think you run into a problem of scale (no pun intended) when talking about types of reflective foil on a bait. HVAC tape can be fine on a big musky lure but not so great looking on a 2" bass bait because of its thickness and the problems you run into trying to hide the edges of the tape. Like RayburnGuy, I like the Venture Brite-Bak tape on bass baits because it's thin and you can burnish the edges so they disappear. It also saves me a step - I don't have to apply a coat of epoxy over the foil to hide the edges, so I just go right to paint (some do, some don't).

JHMO, you'll never get a true level surface on any topcoat that you have to brush on, especially on a reel where you have large flat and curved areas that will show the slightest imperfection. I painted a reel with rattle can auto primer, paint and clearcoat, which looked great initially but proved not to be up to the rigors of reel use. IMO, the only way to get a good looking and DURABLE finish on a reel is to spray auto primer, paint and 2 part high solids clearcoat with a spray gun and then bake it. This requires breathing protection against the isocyanates in auto clearcoat. Solarez contains wax to make the surface of the coating hard and non-sticky when it cures. If you let wet Solarez sit too long on a surface, some of the wax will migrate to a lower section of the piece and cause a milky white haze there. There's probably slight haze all over Solarez anyway but if the wax migrates, it just becomes noticeable - especially over a darker paint background. MEKP is an alternative or an addition to using UV light to cure Solarez. I doubt it, per se, has anything to do with the finished appearance of the coating but have never tried it.

Well, if you never hit the bill with the sandpaper, no problem. Also, if you use a clearcoat that adheres well to plastic, you can coat the bill or any other part of the lure and any scratches disappear. Any clearcoat you'd care to name will make scratches disappear - but some will adhere and look better than others. In my experience, epoxy does not look good on bills and when it yellows, it shows up very quickly. The best clearcoat for plastic lips I've found is Dick Nite S81 moisture cured urethane. It will not adhere well to polycarbonate (aka Lexan) however. Solarez UV cured polyester also makes scratches disappear though I haven't used it enough to comment on its adhesion properties.

If it's a floating lure and your new pattern is a solid color, I just scuff up the existing paint and refinish because the extra weight will have negligible effect on the lure. If you want to get adventuresome, you can burn it off with a propane torch - this takes skill not to ruin the lure. I don't like using solvents because they are very messy and they will cloud the lip if you get any on there (I always do). If you need to end up with a clear plastic body to paint a translucent pattern like ghost craw, the best method is sandpaper, maybe a little shaving/scraping with a very sharp knife - and patience.

About Glonation paint glow times: I bought White a couple of years ago and it said that it glowed greenish white (true) for 12 hrs after charging. I have another jar that is white color in daylight that is labeled "Green" and is supposed to glow green for 10 hrs. I have another jar labeled Green that also looks Green in daylight. The website currently says that the white glows for only 10 minutes - the shortest time of any of the paints. I can't see a rhyme or reason for the confused labeling, so can only guess they have changed the formulation of various colors over the last few years, adding dye to some colors that show white in daylight but glow a different color in the dark. You need to read up on the glow times of the various colors as published on the site right now, since that will probably be what you get.

I know it doesn't effect glow paint and surmise it doesn't effect UV paint either because both of them are getting hit by light through the transparent topcoat.

I've had the second coat react with the first coat and bubble unless the first had completely out-gassed all of its solvent and had begun to moisture cure - so what's the minimum re-coat time? I guess it depends on environmental conditions. I've done OK when waiting at least 24 hrs, 48 hrs is probably better. But with your specific problem, I don't know whether a second coat will help or not.

UV reactive paint is different from glow paint. UV paint fluoresces when hit by UV light. Glow paint stores light energy and releases it over time. There is at least one soft plastics company and a hard bait manufacturer (Storm) that offer UV colors in their lures, but I haven't fished them - yet. I didn't know Createx was offering it now. If they don't jack the price up too high, why not try it?

I don't think drilling the epoxy out of the eye sockets is "ideal" since you are removing part of the undercoat protection envelope from the lure - but you obviously have to do something and daubing some superglue into the raw sockets will waterproof them and give you a hard base for the eye to adhere to. All this fiddling with 3D eyes is one reason I rarely use them. JMHO, painted eyes look fine and don't generate the same problems..

I've never had anything like that happen with DN S81, even on lures trolled for many hours. My first suspicion is you might have gotten one of the other topcoat products sold by DN, like his water based topcoat. If the topcoat turned milky after prolonged soaking, that means it absorbed water and is the water based topcoat. The S81 first dries like regular urethane, then moisture cures over several days into a tougher coating. Does your "S81" have a distinctive solvent smell? If you're sure you got the correct S81, then I would look at the coatings underneath the topcoat. Never heard of it happening, but you can't exclude the possibility that another solvent based coating prevented the S81 from curing properly. In any event, I'd contact DN to investigate the problem.

I would re-drill the eye sockets and seal them with superglue, then use the D2T topcoat to cover everything.

The Glonation paint comes in a gel so it can hold the heavier glow grains in suspension. You need to be careful thinning lest the grains begin to fall to the bottom of the container or clump together and clog your airbrush. It's not a product with elegant solutions to its limitations but I like the stuff because it glows like crazy.

The spring is a great idea for holding the lures. Bravo!

I assume there must be sources for moisture cured urethanes in Europe. Dick Nite S81 is popular here because it has low viscosity and is custom-formulated for coating lures, but there are other brands of MCU sold by paint companies as floor finishes, like Famowood and Garco. Bloxygen is nitrogen and argon. I think a gas used for welding would be similar but it might not be sold in the handy aerosol cans like Bloxygen. You might check for anything sold as a "finish preserver", which is the primary function of Bloxygen. Createx is water based latex and dries as soon as you can evaporate the water, in 15-30 seconds with a hair dryer. Lacquer based paints naturally dry quicker than Createx and are sold by taxidermy paint sources but are toxic and require respiratory protection when using with an airbrush, which is why water based paint is more popular.

Mark, I got the white paint. Shows white in sunlight, white/greenish tint in the dark. The website looks like its having some design problems displaying all of their products correctly. BTW, they suggest mixing powder with an auto clearcoat and spraying it in multiple coats with an HVLP gun, over a white basecoat to glow a bicycle - same should work on a spoon.

The website doesn't say what size the powder particles are. If you add glow powder to a clearcoat, it would surely level out much better than the Glonation paint, which has a gel viscosity. But you'd probably still have to brush it on. I haven't tried the powder so can't really comment on its glow. If you add glow particles to a color acrylic paint, you mask most of the grains and inhibit them from charging. Using Glonation is a compromise, but so it using an airbrush glow paint. I have factory painted glow spoons and their glow is very subtle compared to Glonation.

It's all guesswork but two things often cause solvent based topcoats to wrinkle/bubble: if it is applied too thick, the topcoat forms an initial skin but wet topcoat stays too long underneath the skin in contact with the acrylic paint, causing wrinkles. Second, it can wrinkle if it was applied over another solvent based coating with which it is incompatible. Multiple light coats of topcoat can help with the first problem. If you go with a self-etching primer, you may have to experiment with different topcoats to find one that has compatible solvents. And it often helps to use coatings from the same family of coatings sold by one manufacturer. When I first started dipping lures in Dick Nite moisture cured urethane, it would wrinkle at the drop of a hat. I had put the lures on a rotator to dry and the urethane tended to pool over one spot on the lure and cause the paint there to wrinkle. It would also wrinkle if I tried to do multiple coats before enough time had passed to allow all the solvent in the first coat to gas off. It can take more than one day for that to happen. I solved the first problem by simply hanging the lures up to dry, which allowed any excess urethane to drip off the tail of the lure instead of pooling underneath the skin. I solved the second problem by deciding that one coat of the finish was enough!

The Glonation paint I used says it's white but it's actually greenish white. Different glow colors glow for different periods of time and the white is supposed to glow the longest, for around 12 hours. The Glonation website lists the glow duration of various colors. I chose white for the duration and because it best matches the color of shad which is the main forage species around here in the winter. kajay, a lot of greensih white glow lures are used in saltwater, so I don't think the color was the thing that was off-putting to your fish. Maybe the stinging tentacles? Don't know how well it will sand - it seems sort of rubbery when dried in a thick coat on my spoons, and only the Dick Nite made it hard and slick. The glow paint was a revelation to me when I tried it on jigging spoons. Fishing in a crowd over largemouth bass 55 ft deep, I caught fish on every drop while others were just hauling water. I've also used it to catch white bass and land locked striped bass, so to me its usefulness is CONFIRMED. Salmon? Have no idea!

I use white Glonation paint on jigging spoons and have put it on a rattle bait or two. It's a catch-22 deal. It's way too thick and grainy for an airbrush. On the other hand, glow paint light output is determined by the number and size of the grains, and this stuff puts out enough light to read a newspaper in complete darkness - so I'm willing to forgo the esthetics. After a white color base coat, I brush it on as gently and evenly as possible with a flat artist's brush in 4 as-heavy-as-possible coats. It will never self-level but multiple coats equalize the thickness and when dried, it comes out fairly nice. I use Dick Nite or Solarez to topcoat. It's a product more appropriate to home brew lures than commercial spoon painting but I seriously doubt you'll find an airbrush applied glow paint that will put out the amount of light that Glonation does, and its strong glow catches lots of fish for me when I use it on jigging spoons in deep water.

I don't really mean to knock any method for designing or making a bait. Another guy may use a process just because he enjoys using that process. That's fine. It's a hobby for most of us and we're doing it for the enjoyment. I'm a hobby builder and my "hands-on" methods certainly aren't the most efficient or quickest. They're just sufficient to build enough baits every year to keep me and a few friends in in crankbaits. I do use a software CAD program to draw and print lip shapes, which is the only way I've found to get really straight lip stencils.