BobP

There are lots of new guides out on the market recently but to me, the gold standard for hardness and reliability are still the Fuji silicon carbide (SIC) guides. Not cheap by any measure but they have a deserved reputation.

You can also cut up a tube bait into several 1/4" rings and use them like you would an O ring. Not as durable but it improves the durability of the worm and you can match the colors of the tube and the stick bait if you want a more stealth presentation. Just another option.

I've tried several brands of MCU including Dick Nite and a couple of "generic" brands like Garco. I found the Dick Nite to be thinner and clearer than the othes and think his stuff may have more solvent in it because it doesn't "go off" as quickly as the others did. The question is whether to pay around $50 for the good stuff (Dick Nite) or go with a cheaper brand like Garco, which you can find on line for around half that price. Personally, I think the results with Dick NIte and the longer shelf life are worth the extra $$.

After you have rounded off the bait to its finished shape, waterproof the wood and temporarily install all the hardware you are going to use in the bait, including the lip and the treble hooks. Then try the float test again. If the bait still flops over in the water, it will need ballast to work properly. A quick way to guestimate how much ballast is needed is to hang lead on the belly treble hook until the lure floats straight with its lip and about half its body underwater. Drill a hole immediately in front of the belly hanger, glue the lead in, and you're ready to apply finish.

Yep, same stuff! Maybe it's a California thing. Only works right if you live within 25 miles of the Pacific ocean and say "Dude" a lot . Seriously, I can see lots of small wax flakes floating on the surface of my Solarez, so maybe there is some variability in how the batches are mixed. Since the prime use of Solarez seems to be coating surf boards, most of which are basically white and where the application method is usually a squeegee, maybe the amount of wax content is not a critical factor for typical users. But if you use a counter-shaded paint scheme on a crankbait where the back is a dark color, any wax hazing really stands out. Several details could contribute to hazing. Maybe hanging the bait up after the initial coating but before curing contributes to the wax migrating to the lowest part of the lure - typically the tail section. Perhaps it would be better to rotate the lure while you wait for the Solarez to level out - if you wait. Ambient temperature may effect how the Solarez behaves while being applied. Dunno - waiting for a Solarez guru to appear who has enough experience to know where you can screw it up and who is able to tell me exactly how to get perfect results every time.

Yes - but it's fairly laborious to do and you have to do it carefully so as not to damage the blank. Then you have the question: can you apply another handle from the butt of the rod, or do you need to remove most of the guides and the reel seat in order to fit a new handle on the tapered blank - in effect, a complete rebuild. I've done it a few times, including converting a spinning rod to a baitcaster, and usually end up rebuilding the whole rod. Nowadays, I'd be more inclined to just fix up the cork with sanding and cork filler, or applying an add-on grip material.

I'd email Wright-McGill (if that's who made it) and ask them for a replacement guide. Also ask what brand/sizes are used on the rod if you want to buy some spares.

Topcoats get so much attention here on TU because they are "the face" of every lure you make. Discussions about them seem endless. Like most other builders, I want finishes to be as perfect as possible in terms of both presentation and reliability. It's really not enough that a bass won't care if the lure has some haze on it - I CARE. If a problem in the topcoat pops up after I undercoat and paint the lure, the topcoat isn't meeting my expectations and I feel like the build was at least partially a failure. Making it worse is the knowledge that a screwed up topcoat is a royal PITA to fix. It would be great if someone comes up with an iron clad reliable method of using UV cured polyester for topcoating. Something you can count on to make it work as reliably as epoxy, auto clearcoat, or moisture cured urethanes to get a presentation-ready crankbait. Having tried it myself, I know that I don't know how to do it.

I first tried dipping a lure and then curing it in a nail UV box in January of this year (in a cold garage). I had both sheeting of the Solarez and the white haze on the aft part of the lure. I'm guessing the white haze is wax that is in the Solarez to suffocate the resin during the curing process so the surface will get hard. Don't ask me what that means exactly because I don't know - I just read it! When I brush Solarez on raw wood as an undercoat, I haven't noticed the white haze... but that's maybe because I don't really care what undercoats look like. But I do get some brush strokes left in the resin because it doesn't level out like epoxy, and I have to sand them out afterwards. In any event, I stopped trying to use Solarez as a topcoat after the first experiment and now I have a lifetime supply of Solarez undercoating. Would the bass really care if there was a white haze on the lure? No, but I do since there are other topcoats where this isn't a problem.

I think a snell knot tied on the shank of a hook below the hook eye is in a protected position so super glue would not be needed. With multiple wraps around the standing line I'm never worried that it will loosen up. That said, I think either type of super glue would work but I tend to favor the liquid, which soaks into a knot better than the gel.

Hey, I was just following Ben's mistake I use 1/32" circuit board but 1/16" polycarbonate. I use the straight cut Wiss snips - yellow handle.

Who springs to mind to me re paintbrush lures is member littleriver. I have a couple of his lures. He uses a sort of an impressionistic method to paint a lure and it's very attractive, though it must be a lot of work.

Yes, McMaster-Carr carries 1' x 1' polycarbonate sheets in a variety of thicknesses. I use the 1/32", which is the typical thickness for bass baits. I cut it with Wiss metal snips, about $12 at home centers. Metal snips will not crack it - it's tough. Polycarbonate comes with adhesive backing on the front and back. Trace your template on the front and cut it about a mm outside your template line. Then strip off the rear backing and use a Dremel fine sanding drum to take the lip down to the exact template line. Strip off the front adhesive and use a Dremel wool polishing drum on the edges to make them clear. For me, this is the easiest, fastest, and most accurate way to cut lips by hand. If you one lip design many times, it is worth it to make a router template and cut them that way. There's a tutorial here on TU somewhere describing that method. Symmetry and exactness are critical to good lips. After struggling with manual attempts to do this for a couple of years, I found a freeware CAD program named Powerdraw. It lets me draw exact shapes to scale and get the line tie hole on lips which have them exactly centered. When finished drawing in the software, the program will print out the lip in the exact size you designed on any standard ink jet printer (a big advantage). Trace the lip onto a piece of clear plastic, cut it out and you have a lip template which you can use and then save for future use. And you also have the lip saved in software should you need it or want to trade designs with anyone who uses the same software.

I make lots of crankbaits. I've never sold one and don't want to. The fact that I have zero commercial interest doesn't inhibit me from participating in TU. Likewise for a majority of the guys on the site. Yeah, sometimes I get dinked for something I say on TU. Stick around any web forum long enough and it will happen to you. It's just the nature of the beast. Most often, stuff like that happens because someone reads meaning into a post that was never intended. When I get that kind of reaction to one of my posts, the onus is on me for not being clear enough or not expressing myself well enough. In the 12 years I've frequented the site, I can't remember seeing a personal insult posted. Differences of opinion, yes. If there were no differences of opinion, I wouldn't bother reading TU ever again.

I don't like to fish with shiny new lead weights because I think it introduces an unnatural element to a Texas rig plastics presentation. The easiest way to get rid of the shine is to dissolve 2 tea spoons of Oxyclean detergent in a warm glass of water. Dump in the weights and you will see their surface begin to bubble as the Oxyclean begins to oxidize the surface of the lead. Come back in a couple of hours, rinse off the weights and they'll be a dark gray color.

I also like soft temper stainless steel wire for bass baits. .041" diameter for most, .031" for very small baits. Try to bend hard temper stainless wire by hand lately? It ain't fun and it's hard to do accurately. The other soft temper wires that are traditionally used are brass and copper. Both are softer than ss but ss is soft enough to easily bend and twist by hand and both brass and copper will eventually corrode. I get mine from McMaster-Carr online, about $7 for a 1/4lb spool. You can also order polycarbonate (aka Lexan) or circuit board, plus other goodies from McMaster-Carr.

I've seen some on a European Musky/Pike site (don't have the URL) but it has been rare to see any detailed patterns posted here on TU. In fact the only one I remember was a Balsa Pro topwater walker pattern posted by Blackjack years ago. As a hobbiest, I often begin by copying a commercial bait that I like, then make tweaks to subsequent builds to tailor the bait to my inclinations. I don't feel you can copy a bait very effectively unless you have an actual bait in hand from which to take weights and careful measurements. So I don't mind paying the freight to get an actual example or two. I used to have a friend who had access to an X-ray machine to see what was inside and were it was placed - that was a huge advantage but unfortunately my buddy moved away. Custom builders who sell baits are not going to post a cookbook of how to make them. Hobby builders rarely have the software and/or the inclination to do it.

Benton, yes that's a great tip and works with a lot of wood baits. I've used it on Rapalas, no problem. When I tried it on an old Poes, the thick white undercoating on the bait immediately burst into vigorous flame. I think the finish techniques most of us use would be fine with torching but you have to be careful with old baits since they sometimes employed a thick "build layer" of flammable goop. One guy told me they used solvent based flooring glue in the shop where he worked as an undercoating for their finish. In a production setting, it's faster and cheaper to dip baits in a thick viscous coating than it is to hand sand them.

If the Devcon is over acrylic paint, you can get a thin bladed knife under it and it will peel off pretty easily. On a lip or on a plastic bait with 3D features ? Probably never. Sometimes the gain just ain't worth the pain.

I didn't mean to throw cold water on anyone's experiment if it can tell you something about how to do it better. Maybe my approach is overly practical-minded. Build it - fish it - build another and try to make it better - fish it - etc is just the way I do it. I try to exactly replicate all the baits in a batch but I often find there are small but sometimes significant differences in how they fish. This hobby can absolutely drive you crazy if you let it

I'm all for experimentation but I honestly think we're getting too far down into the weeds on this. Water temperature varies by season, day, and hour. Other variables enter into the picture, like what type and diameter of line you're using on the bait. If you live in Minnesota, your average water temp is much different from a guy who fishes in Florida. Rivers have different water temp determinants than reservoirs. The variables are just too many to predict and I'm assuming few of us have reached the demented state yet in which we feel the need for a variety of crankbaits tuned to fish in different temperatures in addition to the variety we already take fishing! I say build your bait to have roughly the flotation you want as observed in a test tank or a bucket of water. Then take it to the lake or pool and test it with the equipment you typically use to fish crankbaits. For diving crankbaits, the flotation will not change so much due to water temp that you need to worry about it. If you want to build suspending lures, use water that feels about the same as the warmest water you fish suspending baits in. Then, when you fish colder water you'll just need to add a Suspendot, a larger treble, or an extra split ring to get it to suspend. JMHO

Specifically Dick Nite S81 moisture cured urethane. He sells other finishes that are not as durable. You can find other vendors for moisture cured urethane on the web but the Dick Nite formulation is superior for crankbaits IMO. Read up on it before you jump, it's a bear to store without "going off" and it ain't cheap - but it's good. For Dick Nite, use this for a TU discount: http://www.dicknite.com/TU_Lander.htm The delivered cost is around $50 per quart The Solarez is a UV cured polyester resin like that used on surfboards. It's relatively new to TU'ers so do a search and read up on it before you decide. Like everything, it has pluses and minuses.

Teak has a nominal density of 42 lbs/cu ft, which is about twice that of woods typically used for crankbaits like cedar, basswood, etc. Water has a density of 62.4 lbs/cu ft. I think you'll find it hard to build a crankbait that won't sink after you add the hardware. The lighter woods also have a more lively action when used in crankbaits. Compared to the work you put into them, raw materials for crankbaits are dirt cheap. The wood is only a few pennies worth and it's one of the most important components of a good crankbait, so no, I wouldn't use teak.

Skeeter, we'll have to agree to disagree on the physics. Cold water is more dense and the bait has to push through more water molecules to rise to the surface and so you may have a point - that might slow the bait's rise somewhat. But on the other hand, physics says that colder water is more dense and so there will be a bigger difference in density between itself and the crankbait, and bigger difference = faster rise. Honestly, I don't throw deep diving crankbaits in water colder than 55 degrees so have no practical experience on this. But I do throw lots of suspending jerkbaits, many of which are 8-10 ft divers that require exterior weighting to suspend properly in colder water. Basically, I think we may be down to discussing how many angels can dance on the head of this pin. Considering balsa as a special case arises from the fact that its density is so different from the other woods used for baits. Balsa AVERAGE density is 12 lbs/cu ft. All the other popular crankbait woods have densities of around 20 lbs/cu ft or heavier - almost twice as heavy - and there are few if any woods that fill the gap between balsa and the hardwoods. So balsa is special in that respect - but it still has to obey the laws of physics.

Chuck, The main things I would be concerned about with "Perfect Finish" are whether it is waterproof and durable. Etex (aka Envirotex Lite) is a popular topcoat because it is both durable and waterproof, but it is sold as a pour-on decoupage coating - which has to be neither waterproof or durable. The durability and water resistance are just byproducts of the fact that Etex is an epoxy. I'd carefully read the label before trying Perfect Finish.