BobP

I'm not the epoxy guru. There is surely stuff about epoxy that I don't know. I've had epoxy failures, but not in recent years, and here's what I think I learned. In my experience, acetone is not a good solvent for epoxy and can cause problems more often than it helps, including fish eyes and failure to harden. I often mix in a few drops of denatured alcohol after the epoxy is mixed to extend the brush time. It's the only solvent I've tried that will not significantly delay the hardening process or affect the hardness of the cured epoxy. Epoxy cures through a chemical reaction between the resin and the hardener. Anything you add to the liquid mix runs the chance of inhibiting the reaction and causing problems. Measuring: The more accurate the better, though there seems to be a little leeway. If the volumes are out of whack, it will not cure hard. I used to pour equal sized pools of hardener/resin and that worked almost all the time. It works less well in cool temps when the resin and hardener have different viscosities which makes judging pool size iffy. I switched to using syringes to measure it out. Mixing: To my mind, this is where you can screw up most easily. It has to be really thoroughly mixed. You get in a hurry because you're afraid it will harden faster than you can get it on the lure. Mix time is not much of an issue with slow cure Etex but it is with 30 minute glue epoxies like Devcon. But the hardener and resin need to be mixed to the molecular level, which means mixed really well. How much mixing is enough? It depends on how vigorously you mix, the container and what tool you use. With Devcon Two Ton, I mix in a small tin foil covered jar lid and use strips cut from old credit cards - and I mix the crap out of it for around a minute. I don't care if it looks like whipped cream when I'm finished. If it does, adding a few drops of alcohol thins the mix and helps it release the small bubbles. Also, if your mixing container has any nook or cranny where resin can hide during the mix and you brush it on the lure - you'll have a soft spot.

The way to fix uncured epoxy is to recoat it with properly measured and mixed new epoxy. Underline properly measured and properly mixed. 75% of the time, it was not mixed enough. 24% of the time, it was measured wrong. 1% of the time, the epoxy was at fault (stored too long).

There is a user-submitted tutorial by Fatfingers on applying Etex. It is the "bible" on that particular epoxy. I can't imagine wasting the amount of any epoxy that would be required to dip lures, especially since epoxy levels out so well after brushing it on.

Bluetick, I've only heard that cleaners containing ammonia strip chrome. I've used acetone for years without noticing any damage and I like it because it is one of the most volatile solvents and so dissolves paint very quickly.

If you have a color printer, you can make water slide decals with appropriate graphics and text. Several TU'ers know how to do this (but not me!).

Mark, you are just to darned impatient! It's SUPPOSED to take hours to shape, hours to sand, hours to paint, and then DAYS to wait while the topcoat you choose hardens. My God! If we all built crankbaits in a day, we'd be over-run with the danged things.

Sure - I use 5 minute epoxy because I hate sitting around waiting but whatever floats your boat! I like to fit the hardware inside so the halves fit together without any pressure needed to hold them together.

When you dip balsa in prop, the bubbles are from the prop penetrating the wood. Most of them burst if the solution is thin enough and those that don't will usually disappear with the next dip. When all the pores in the balsa are filled with dried prop, bubbles cease. I use 7-9 dips of thin prop. If I see any bubbles after the 3rd dip, I'll give the prop a very light sanding with 400 grit and then continue. There's no agreed-on formula for prop solution, but I find thinner is better. I like mine to be just slightly thicker than water.

You can re-coat the lures with epoxy (Devcon Two Ton or alternative) and they will come out fine. Epoxy is one of the few clearcoats that you can add to any lure with no chance that it will react badly with underlying coatings. But explore some of the threads on epoxy to make sure you apply it correctly and get best results.

X3. I use multiple coats of prop but not over another coating. I'd choose one undercoating and do multiple coats of it. After 6-8 dips in prop, I think it needs a hardening period of 12-24 hrs to become really hard and expel all of its acetone. Haven't used polyacrylic sealer, but maybe it would work as well as prop as an undercoating since it will be covered with water based paint. But I hesitate to put a solvent based coating between 2 water based coatings.

I often weigh out all the components of a bait to hit a finished target weight and estimate a coat of D2T adds .03 oz to a bass size crankbait. Will it make a difference in the action? Yes, anything you do to a bait can change the action to some degree. Adding additional weight will dampen the action slightly. But it's your choice to judge whether the difference in action is significant enough to warrant a change for purely esthetic reasons.

With adhesive foil, I lay the lure on the peel-off backing, trace the lure, then cut it out. Guys who use gold leaf apply the glue, stick on the foil and remove the excess with a brush. You have to adapt your method to the type of foil you are using. Sorry, I can't help you on how to partially remove finish - I usually find it's everything or nothing. For me, it's almost always better to add new finish on the top of the old on a balsa bait. If you try to remove finish and get down to raw balsa in one spot, it's almost impossible to do a spot repair. I've never had any luck with chemical paint removers on crankbaits. I've sometimes tried to torch the finish off the whole lure and start from scratch. It's very quick to do. But If the lure has a flammable undercoating (many wood lure makers used a thick solvent based "build layer" on top of the raw wood), it will burst into flame and you'll be left holding a cinder with a melted lip that used to be a crankbait. So if the lure is important to you, I wouldn't try it.

I get around 8-9 months dipping lures from 2 jars preserved with Bloxygen. If you brush and use the can tapping method of dispensing DN, it may last until it is all gone.

WooHoo! my quarterly check from Brite-Bak just arrived! I'm not saying it's the epitome of crankbait foil but it's hard to beat for convenience. Peel-and-stick has it all over anything that requires me holding a glue bottle to get the job done. I've tooled foil on hard lures the same way as on wood. The foil is soft enough to show a pattern if you tool it after it's applied though it will not be as distinct as on a wood lure. That doesn't mean there aren't other ways of doing it. You can tool foil and then apply it but you have to be careful not to burnish out the pattern while smoothing it down, which can be difficult with adhesive foil. It might be better to use a non-adhesive foil to preserve the pattern. It just depends on how much fiddling you want to do. YouTube has a video of a Japanese artist texturing foil by inscribing each line of a scale pattern on foil before gluing it on his lure. Beautiful effect but I can't conceive of taking the time to do that, nor do I have the skill, nor do I think the bass will care.

The only foil I use is Venture Brite-Bak foil, which is a thin but strong foil designed for stained glass artists. Why? It has a strong adhesive backing and is the most trouble-free foil. As to design, most foils are put on the bait and THEN textured to represent a scale pattern. Many of us use a knurled tool handle for texturing. I usually use the little knurled knob from some Vise-Grip pliers. There are different schools of thought about painting over foil. Some guys like to clearcoat the bait over the foil, paint, then re-clearcoat the bait. This is the safest method because you can easily wash off the paint if you goof it up. I usually just apply paint directly to the raw foil. Acrylic latex paints from Createx and many other companies come in two versions: opaque and transparent. use the transparent to maintain the foil's reflectivity. You can either custom mix the colors you need from the basic Createx palette, or just spray one color over another to blend the colors. Hope this helps.

Well, good news and bad. No, I don't think it's the same brand as D2T. The good news is that it probably doesn't matter as long as what you received is a slow cure "30 minute" epoxy. If it is, it should work OK and you got a deal since 6 syringes of epoxy are less epoxy than a double bottle set. I Googled Great Planes and it comes in both a 30 minute version and a 5 minute version. Each is clearly labeled as to cure time (I should rather say bonding time). There are lots of 30 minute epoxies on the market and TUers have tried many of them with good results, so I wouldn't hesitate to try the Great Planes brand as long as it is not the quick cure 5 minute version. 5 minute epoxies use a different hardener than 30 minute epoxies. 5 minute epoxy is fine for crankbait construction as long as it doesn't show on the outside of the lure. But it cures too quickly to level out as a topcoat needs to do and it turns an ugly brown color after exposure to UV light. Measure your parts accurately by volume and mix it THOROUGHLY, making sure to incorporate all the hardener and resin in the mix. You can thin it slightly with a FEW drops of denatured alcohol after mixing. That lengthens the brushing time by a couple of minutes and helps the epoxy expel any bubbles. The primary cause of epoxy that will not harden is failure to mix it enough. It is somewhat forgiving of measuring errors but the strongest epoxy finish is one that has been measured exactly and mixed thoroughly.

The DN under the skin is still usable. But it's hard to remove the skin without leaving chunks that will mess up the finish if you still want to dip lures in it. I use a spoon or a cheap syringe to get the still-liquid DN out of the jar and brush it on. When I use nothing or Bloxygen and a skin forms, it is very hard and I have to break it with a hammer and chisel. I recently tried using aerosol wine preserver instead of Bloxygen and a soft skin formed quickly, which is easy to penetrate but it also negates dipping lures. Bloxygen is nitrogen/argon. Wine preserver is argon/CO2. It's cheaper than Bloxygen but if you dip lures, it's not a good solution IMO.

A couple of questions. I read the info on the KBS site but couldn't find a MSDS sheet on the Diamond Finish. According to the site, it continues to harden for several weeks. That's true for many urethanes but do you know whether it may be a moisture cured urethane? I like the info saying that it contains 60% solids, which is a hallmark of good auto urethanes. But most of them require mixing with an activator containing isocyanates, which are highly toxic. That brings me back to the MSDS and user precautions, which are not extensively discussed on the site. What do you thin your KBS with? The site mentions a proprietary thinner they sell. One of the users mentioned thinning it with xylene. Bottom line, it sounds promising but there are a couple of niggling questions I have before springing $60 for a quart.

There have been several water based clearcoats tried by TU'ers. A few builders like them OK. But most, including me, find them subject to water absorption which softens the clearcoat, turns it white, and makes it unsuitable for crankbaits. Good luck but I'm skeptical.

Why slowly? I mix the devil out of D2T and when I'm finished, it's milky due to the small air bubbles in it, which disappear when I brush it on with a fine bristle artist's brush. If the mix is a little stiff when finished, I add in a FEW drops of denatured alcohol to make it more brushable and help it expel bubbles. It should cure uniformly on the bait and be hard enough to handle in about 5 hrs. The only reason I can see for it hardening on most of the bait but not in one area is that the soft epoxy was not included in your mixing effort. If D2T has not hardened enough to hold in your hand after, say, 10 hrs, it almost surely never will. You can repair it by applying another coat.

OK, I'm ignorant. What exactly is ACC?

There are only 2 ways I've ever been able to remove cured epoxy. I can heat it up with a torch and it will bubble and become easy to peel off. Or I can use a thin, very sharp knife to get under the epoxy and peel it off. Either way, the bait has to be repainted afterward. Torching finish off a lure is very fast but you have to be very careful not to damage the lip or expand a plastic bait. And if you are torching original finish off a commercial wood lure, be aware that some brands use a thick "build layer" on the raw wood that will burst into fire at the first touch of a flame. I tried torching a Poe 400 one time and it became the lure's funeral pyre. Torching an old wood Rapala worked beautifully and it was ready to paint in a few seconds with the build layer intact.

That looks great and it's a neat solution. Personally, I don't leave crankbaits in the boat between fishing trips. Too much moisture around because I park my boat outside under a boat cover.

I've tried spot repairs on epoxy several times and it has worked exactly once, when I got lucky and laid in exactly the right amount of epoxy to fill a fish eye. It's a very low probability fix. Most times I misjudged the amount of epoxy needed to fill repair area and it looked unacceptable. So now I do as Ben suggests - sand down the problem area and re-coat the entire lure, or better yet - just forget it and go fishing with a note to self to check the crankbait more carefully before the epoxy has begun to harden. After all, how do you sand down a clearcoat without ruining the underlying paint job? Once you hit the paint, it's ruined and you have to peel off the epoxy and start from scratch.