BobP

I think it's custom adhesive foil, put on the bait, then clearcoated. When you're making a few thousand in a factory, you can do stuff like that!

Most jerkbaits are designed like yours; the ballast is in the tail when the lure is cast so it stabilizes the bait in flight and makes for longer casts. After the cast, the first jerk on the bait causes the ballast to ride forward, often over a hump or an incline so it stays in the front of the bait for the remainder of the retrieve. So what you may be missing is the in-flight stability.

I've cleared Rattletraps with epoxy and it works OK, though you have to expect that when they get worn, it will first appear on the sharp edges at the shoulders. Guess what I'm saying is yes, it's possible, but no, it's not ideal. You can minimize the problem by sanding down the edges so they have a little radius. There's also the issue of the sound the lure will produce under an epoxy topcoat, which will muffle the rattles somewhat if the epoxy coating is thick. All in all, I'd rather topcoat them with Dick Nite MCU if I were repainting a bunch of them - but that's not to say I'd pop for $50 of DN just to do a few Rattletraps.

I don't know personally, but a lot of musky guys use Envirotex Lite (aka Etex) because they feel it is more impact resistant. Of course, it cures slower and requires more coats than other epoxies because it is a thin viscosity "table top" pour-on epoxy that contains some solvent. You didn't mention what kind of foil you are using but if it is the aluminum duct tape variety, it may have a plastic coating that inhibits epoxy adhesion. But basically, I think your epoxy is chipping off due to hook impacts/rash and the only remedy may be to find something tougher than epoxy. I don't know what that would be for certain. I think moisture cured urethane is slicker and tougher but it is a thin film coating that is hard to use in multiple coats without bubbling. You also might want to investigate the hardness and flexibility of Solarez UV cured finish, though from the anecdotes I read so far, it can still chip.

I am experiencing very slow site response times again for the past week, occasionally getting a message that the server is too busy to respond or having to wait up to 30 seconds for the site to respond. Several other TU members have also commented on the problem, so I know it's not just me! If this is spammers overloading the site with their crap again, isn't it something that the ISP should be correcting? I never get this problem on other fishing sites that I frequent, like Bass Resource.com or wmi.org.

I make the joint slant a little from the back forward so the joint is not obtrusive to a bass coming up from behind the bait. I use interlocked hand-made screw eyes so the joint has good action. Not sure how one would get a hinge to work properly on a slanted joint .

Mark, Nope. I have a 12 oz bottle set of D2T and a quart of MCU to work through before taking the plunge! If it goes as usual, the quart of MCU (Garco brand) will be toast pretty quickly so I may get around to Solarez sooner rather than later.

There certainly are lots of ways to finish a balsa bait! I think you have 2 options about grain pops. You can either use a thick undercoating that will over-glaze the grain pops or you can sand out any popping as it occurs before you proceed to whatever your next finish step is. For balsa baits, I go with the over-glaze because thicker = stronger and I also want to reinforce the bait for durability. This is also the strategy used by most commercial bait makers who have to be production-oriented. I know this isn't the answer Buffingtonwa was hoping for but I don't know any super thin, super strong coatings that I would trust enough to preserve 3D detail on a balsa bait.

I bought a few Megabass Vision 110 knockoffs with chrome finish awhile back. The price on the real 110's is crazy! I know because I've bought a few. When I float tested the KO's with trebles before painting, I found that they would not suspend head-down like the real thing. I fixed that by putting some lead tape in front of the front treble before painting them. Now they LOOK exactly like $25 Ito Vision 110's and they suspend correctly... but do they really have exactly the same action as a real 110? Dunno but I sort of doubt it. Maybe the KO's will be great jerkbaits in their own right, I haven't fished one enough yet to know. But based on my experience with various KO's, I'm not betting the ranch on it. That's not to say that there are not some really good KO's 'out there'. But if your expectation is that the KO will be just like the original, you're not being realistic.

There are various styles that work and it depends a lot on the kind of wire you are using and how bendable it is. I've seen heavy gauge single strand hard temper stainless wire put through the hole and bent back to form a simple loop line tie. This is only feasible if you can bend heavy gauge wire accurately. I've seen medium gauge hard or soft temper stainless fitted through two holes in the lip at the line tie and run back to the body. I've seen twisted soft temper wire fitted through one hole in the lip and run back to the body. I prefer working with soft temper .040" stainless wire and use the latter scheme. Whichever method, you want to drill the hole (s) in your lip to a diameter that makes a friction fit with the wire you are using. I drill the hole slightly smaller than the wire with a Dremel tool and micro drill bit. Then I put the 90 degree bend in the wire and twist it back and forth in the hole until it is enlarged just enough to force the wire through to the bottom. How you handle securing the wire into the nose of the bait also can vary. If I am building a split balsa lure, I often bend the end of the wire into an L shape, make a pocket in the lure to fit the wire, then glue it and the lip in when I join the bait halves back together. Alternatively, you can make the wire part of a through-wire frame that includes the belly and tail hook hangers. On hard wood lures, I usually make a slot in the back of the lip and bend the wire back over the top of the lip to make a strong "lip package" that can be glued into the bait after painting. If you are using heavy gauge wire, it may be strong enough just to cut the end of the wire even with the back of the lip and glue it in when you mount the lip. On deep divers when the line tie is far out on the lip surface and I am using soft temper stainless wire, I often run a bead of epoxy along the wire at the bottom of the lip to reinforce its long run to the body. So obviously, there are alternatives. I'm sure others can chime in with other schemes. They all work fine just depending on how well you can bend wire, what kind of wire you choose, and the look you want for your bait.

If you can't or don't want to use an epoxy, that leaves 3 alternative topcoats. Moisture cured urethane like Dick Nite S81 Solarez UV cured resin Auto 2 part urethane finishes. I can't speak to how any of the alternatives will work with the coatings you have already selected. An epoxy would almost surely work OK but if you have discarded that possibility, then you just have to experiment. I suggest you do some searching and reading on the alternatives before you jump.

I've been doing this for about a decade and it takes me at least an hour to round over a wood bait. What helped me the most is the realization that I need to mark out everything I can before I begin rounding the bait, if I want it to end up symmetrical. After cutting the nose and tail tapers with a sanding disk, I use a compass to mark facets onto the corners of the body, running the compass along the top, bottom, and sides. I cut the facets with a wood carving knife - less dust flying that way - easing the cuts out at the tail somewhat. After that, I use a Dremel sanding disk and hand held sand paper to smooth the edges of the facets into the body. Yes, I still have to eyeball things to get the body symmetrical but any kind of "mechanistic' method to guide you will mean less chance of screwing it up. This hobby has taught me a lot about patience and slowing down enough to enjoy the process. If you have aspirations to build baits in quantity for sale, you obviously need to work out more automated methods for shaping baits, both to speed the process and to make them a uniform shape over many examples. If I make 5 baits over the course of a day, that's about all I can expect if I want them to be right.

I use a few Auto-Air colors but no flip/flop colors. There may be some feature to the flip color that causes ANY epoxy to want to fish-eye. If so, you might have to go with a different type of topcoat altogether.

ETEX contain solvent. It has low viscosity and cures slowly so it can release bubbles after being poured on horizontal surfaces like table tops. Perhaps the solvent is causing the problem. If so, the only cure is to switch to a different brand of epoxy or perhaps to spray the painted lure with a coat of Createx clear to prevent the Auto Air from reacting with the ETEX. You can only experiment if no one else had the same problem.

IMO, you never want to sand a wood bait, especially balsa, down to raw wood again. In this case, I would probably fill the cracks with Elmer's exterior wood patch, paint the repairs over with a little super glue or nail polish, then sand the whole lure lightly to give the surface some tooth and repaint it from there. Balsa has lots of buoyancy and I don't think the additional finish and topcoat will significantly effect the action.

I think you'll find getting the right size blade and shape on a Waddle Bat type lure is quite finicky. I tried making one and quickly saw that it would take more testing and modifying than I was willing to do. The rear hook hooking power was also a ? for me. And I'm asking myself how wild a hunting action do you really want or need on a crankbait? Does wildly erratic necessarily translate into more bites? JMHO, the answer is "not always". We need a trained voting committee of highly intelligent mutant bass to run all this stuff by. Then they can tell us what works and what won't. But I suspect bass are just too moody to trust their judgement.

If you are thru-wiring a bass bait, soft temper stainless or soft brass makes things much easier. The stainless steel is slightly stiffer and stronger than the brass and it will not corrode or darken. On bass baits longer than 2 inches, I use .040" soft stainless. I think soft temper wire at least .032" is plenty strong for bass baits, I just like the look of .040". BTW, according to a chart I looked up, 19 gauge wire is .035" dia. I order wire and lip material from McMaster-Carr, which has good prices and service.

Yes, you can use water based acrylic paint on any lure. However, you must put on a waterproof undercoat before you paint a wood lure or water in the paint will cause the wood grain to pop out. I like Devcon Two Ton epoxy as an undercoating on wood lures. There are other options like solvent based coatings or propionate dissolved in acetone. Note you also have to topcoat the lure with a durable waterproof topcoat after painting. You don't need to undercoat plastic lures or any lure that is already waterproof. But on most lures, you will also want to shoot a "color basecoat", typically a highly pigmented white paint to give you a consistent color background for your colors and hide any underlying colors like wood grain. You can use plain water to clean the airbrush between color shots. I like to keep it in a spray bottle. At the end of the session, do a more through cleaning with a Q-tip soaked in acetone and I like to shoot a little acetone through the brush to clean out any paint remaining in the tip. You should also soak your disassembled brush in a dedicated airbrush cleaning solution occasionally to remove any lingering paint, which can accumulate in the airbrush barrel behind the cup. Anything containing ammonia is not recommended for airbrushes because it will dissolve chrome. Paint can be thinned with plain water. If you want or need an even better thinner, the 4011 reducer sold by Createx Auto-Air is also good. Not all airbrush paint needs thinning. You just have to use the paint to see whether it will spray well. Many taxidermy paints are pre-thinned so you can shoot them right out of the bottle.

I think the rear blade is what causes it to hunt.

I feel the VMC trebles are not as sharp as Gamys, nor do they stay as sharp during use. I cut the eyes on some trebles to mount them on Silver Buddy lures. The VMC's did OK. I could cut them with pliers and bend the eyes back together after mounting them on the lures. When I tried the same thing on Gamy trebles, they were much harder to cut and eventually broke rather than cut. They have a much harder tempering. They also rarely bend out on big fish When I give away lures, I often mount them with VMC's because they cost less. The recipients never complain. After all, VMC's are what come on quality lures like Rapala. Many of the custom crankbaits I've bought also use them. In fact, it's rare to see ultra high quality trebles on any custom or factory American bait. But I put Gamakatsus or KVD's on the baits I fish.

The only time I've had wrinkled paint with MCU was when I put lures on a lure turner to dry after dipping them. Never a wrinkle if I just hang them up to drip/dry. My conclusion was that the turner prevented excess MCU from dripping off the lure, causing an area somewhere on the body where the MCU collected and remained wet long enough to wrinkle the paint (even though you couldn't see the pool 'cause the MCU skins over so quickly).

Littleriver, I have this book titled "Precision Casting" by Mark Romanack and Steve Holt that provides graphic dive profiles for most of the commercial crankbaits that were available in 2000 when the book was published. The authors tested crankbaits and made underwater observations to plot their dive depth along a 100 ft retrieve course. A couple of things stick out when you look at the 100+ dive profiles they present. All of the crankbaits reached their maximum dive depth beginning 30 ft from the boat and ending 12 ft from the boat. That is a very small window of maximum depth on a 100 ft cast. And the dive curve of all the baits, be they shallow or deep divers, look very similar. There were no baits that dove to their maximum depth noticeably earlier in the retrieve than any other. I'm not saying someone hasn't or can't come up with a crankbait that breaks the rule as to how quickly it dives. Maybe that has happened in the intervening 12 years. But? Ben - the book includes the 1/2 oz LJ Deep Secret. The deepest it ran was 19 ft with 8lb line on a 100 ft cast. My personal favorite LJ crankbait is the 1/4 oz Baby Hot Lips Express. Very few (if any) 1/4 oz crankbaits can get down to 13.5 ft with 10 lb line.

I also use MCU and have had good luck with Polytranspar Superhide White airbrush paint as a color basecoat. I spray it as the first step in painting versus dipping the lures. The Superhide is a water based highly pigmented paint that dries quickly to a hard smooth surface. I've tried a few "cover whites" and the Superhide is by far the best I've used.

It would help to know what you are painting and how wide a spray pattern you need to have. Most crankbait painters use airbrushes, not spray guns which are generally more suited to things like painting automobiles, etc. If you are talking about airbrushes, I can recommend the Revolution line of brushes made by Iwata. The quality is high and the price is reasonable at under $100. I use a Revolution HP-BR for most of my lure painting and think it or the Revolution HP-CR with larger paint cup is ideal in terms of cost versus quality.

I've tried various brands including the standard Mustad, VMC short shank and the VMC Rapala trebles (sold by Cabelas). Bottom line, I don't see any bargain hooks that I would recommend and think that if you want premium quality, just accept that you're gonna have to pay for it. I'm using Mustad KVD trebles when I want a short shank hook and the standard Gamakatsu Round Bend trebles when a regular shank hook will do. But I'm finding that I gravitate toward the KVD;s more often in order to up-size I understand Gamakatsu is coming out with a short shank treble and I look forward to trying them. JMHO, Gamakatsu is hard to beat for out-of-the-package sharpness and point durability. I think they use a superior tempering process.