BobP

Different strokes for different folks I don't think I'd make many crankbaits if PVC was all there was to work with. PVC certainly has advantages in the build process but light woods like balsa or paulownia open up possibilities for distributing ballast in interesting and useful ways, even if you want the bait to be the same size and weight as one made from heavier, more durable stuff like cedar, basswood, or ..... PVC. For instance, if you want a very buoyant shallow runner to bang into cover, be very lively, and rise fast over obstructions, balsa is simply unbeatable. Yes, wood requires more finishing steps but balsa, paulownia, cedar, and basswood are great crankbait woods for good reasons. I'm NOT knocking PVC. But given the smorgasbord available, I just can't sit at the table and choose to eat only the mashed potatoes.

The blade depends on a vortex on the back/cup side to get spinning. It looks like the blade will just cup over the nose of the lure, preventing water flow behind the blade, so if you want it to spin it needs to be further away from the nose. I'd cut off the line tie, make what remains into an eye, then add a wire extension to mount the blade further away from the nose.

If your airbrush is moving paint around on the lure when you shoot it, the problem is usually that you are holding the brush too close to the work, shooting too much paint, or the pressure is too high. I think the smallest needle/tip will help as it shoots less paint in a finer spray pattern - I never used anything else on my Paasche unless I was doing larger projects. If you are trying to do detail work, you should definitely use the smallest tip possible and you'll find it takes a lot of trigger control, which you get only with experience and practice. Try spraying less paint, then dry it with a hair dryer before spraying more.

The Garco cured hard and slick so I'm satisfied on that count. Other observations: the gloss is similar to epoxy, not as much as DN. It did not seem to level out quite as well as DN when dipped but that may be because the baits had overall scale net paint which had a slight 3D effect. The first dip was fast, maybe a bit too fast, which might also have contributed to the leveling problem. After 36 hours, I decided to do a 2nd dip and that seemed to level out the topcoat. The 2nd dip did not cause any bubbling or other problems, which sometimes happens with DN. My supposition is that Garco employs a different set of solvents than DN. Whether Garco has the good quality of penetrating acrylic paint to form a monolithic tough finish like DN does is TBD.

I cracked a new can of Garco moisture cured urethane and dipped a batch of lures in it last night. Here are my initial observations: The Garco can be found on the internet for around $25, which is cheap. It's designed as a floor finish. Like DN, it is a very light amber color but it is slightly thicker than DN. It still dips OK but there's a bit more drip-off after dipping due to the viscosity.. Garco's initial drying time is much slower than DN; the lures are still just slightly tacky this morning after 14 hours of air drying. Not so tacky that you can't handle them, but tacky nonetheless, while in comparison DN is always bone dry and slick to the touch after 2-3 hours. Since MCU takes several days to cure and get really tough, I don't know yet whether this is a show stopper. I'll let the lures hang for several days to see if the tackiness goes away as it cures. Garco is also less glossy than DN; I'd say 'satin' versus DN's 'high gloss'. That's a plus or a minus, just depending on your taste in topcoats. If the Garco cures out hard and slick, I'll be satisfied and will continue using it. Will toss it if it doesn't. Will report back after a few days of curing.

A submersion test is valuable. Thanks! I'm also interested in how impact resistant it is and if anyone has an idea of its hardness (aka shore hardness D) compared to epoxy or urethanes, that would put the cherry on top.

Google "acrylic display stand" and you'll get quite a few sources. Of course, since most of us work with clear polycarbonate sheets for making crankbait lips, you could also build your own.

I buy paint online in 4 oz bottles and haven't had any problem with it going bad - some is over 5 yrs old. Nor do I strain paint. Old school: If it isn't spraying, turn up the air pressure! Createx warns not to allow the paint to freeze. As to brands - Createx is the most consistent in quality and has enough pigment that you can thin it as much as 50% if desired (so they say) - but I buy any brand of airbrush paint if it has a color I think is interesting. I have Polytranspar, Smith Wildlife, Createx, Auto Air (a division of Createx), and Van Dyke Translatex. They're all acrylic latex. Of those, I prefer Createx and Smith Wildlife for their consistency. Most non-Createx brands are formulated to be "ready to shoot", meaning they need no thinning before shooting them. When possible, I don't like to thin or mix paint colors, other guys always thin and love mixing paint to get special colors. Besides the basic Createx palette of colors, there are 2 paints that I especially like. The first is Smith Wildlife Pearl Chrome. It's a transparent pearl with microscopic chrome flake that tones down underlying paint contrast to blend a paint scheme together and give it a nice "baitfish sheen". My other favorite is Polytranspar Superhide White, used for color basecoating. It shoots well, has lots of pigment to hide underling wood grain quickly, dries very fast to a hard white shell. In the basic Createx line you have to choose between opaque and transparent paint. I often favor transparent paint because you can layer it over other colors for effect or spray it heavier to be opaque. Keep it simple at first and you'll decide for yourself what brands, effects you like to use as you gain experience.

I would be very interested in hearing back from early users about how Solarez holds up in the field.

It's both. You can put in the time and master the craft and can turn out quality crankbaits with standard paint schemes that catch fish, without much artistic ability. I'm a very pedestrian painter and I KNOW! But if you aspire to produce the kind of top level work you'll see in some of the pics in the TU photo gallery, that requires raw artistic ability. Now, the extent to which game fish appreciate artistic ability is another question... At some level, and I think it's a fairly low level, paint means more to the fisherman than the fish. Bottom line, don't be discouraged. You get better as time goes on and when your baits catch fish, that's the biggest reward.

Aren't wine barrels made from oak? That's pretty heavy wood. Hope you did a floatation test before you ballasted it.

I bought a few Megabass Vision 110 knockoffs that come with a "silver" - aka chrome - finish from another online source. Nice quality at a somewhat higher price than is typical for knockoffs, and if you want a chromed jerkbait, it's a good one to consider. They are close but are not EXACTLY like a Megabass Ito Vision 110 internally. I had to add lead tape to the front of the bait before painting them to get them to suspend head-down like the originals.

Createx is the "standard" in airbrush paints because of its good quality and wide availability - and it's a good idea to start with a selection of their basic color palette. They can be used straight or mixed for intermediate colors. When you are imitating fish patterns, branching out into pearlized and metallic colors will be something you want to do fairly quickly. When choosing paint, you'll also need to decide whether to order opaque or "transparent" colors. Opaques cover fast and obliterate the color they cover; transparents tend to blend with the color underneath them. You'll want some opaque colors, especially white, to put on wood as a "color basecoat" to hide wood grain and the margins of hardware before you start adding color to to the bait. But many of us prefer transparent paint for the baitfish colors on crankbaits because it lets you layer color to give the bait a more natural look. If you keep at it and are like most of us, you end up with a box of airbrush paint with a wide array of basic and specialized colors. I think my box has about 50 bottles in there, accumulated over the past decade!

Yep, McMaster-Carr is a good source for wire, lip materials, etc - fast service, good prices. I've used soft temper brass wire which I understand is the traditional wire once used in Bagley baits. But I really prefer the soft temper stainless "safety wire" that you can also buy at McMaster. It's just slightly more stiff than soft brass and it will never corrode like brass or copper. Like Ben, I also go with the .040" diameter, which is a good match to the wire originally used. I go to .032" wire for very small baits less than 2" long.

Ain't nobody right all the time. Certainly not me! Even Skeeter may have been wrong at least one time No two builders ever build crankbaits exactly alike and we have different outlooks about whether, and if so, how much weight to put on the opinions of guys who fish our crankbaits. I'm grateful for feedback but not many fishermen, even tournament anglers, are really tuned in about how crankbaits work and how to make them work better, so you have to put any opinion into the right context. As a hobby builder, I've given hundreds of crankbaits to a wide array of fishermen but I've gotten the most useful feedback from other builders with whom I've traded baits.

I've tried a couple of different things including 3M adhesive and contact cement, which works OK but can be really messy. JMHO, save yourself the trouble and buy some Venture Brite-Bak adhesive foil. It's thin, strong, and the adhesive on it works great.

Blackjack makes a good point about the oil in red cedar. Whether it bleeds through your paint depends on the sealer you use on the bait. If it's impervious to oil you'll be OK. Now what sealer that is, I have no idea! On the rare occasions I use cedar, it's always white cedar.

I gave a bass lure to a friend who trolled it for pike in Canada for a week. The combination of trolling over rocks and many pike bites totally trashed it. There was not a square centimeter of solid finish left on the bait; I just threw it away and gave him another. But it was worth the work to build a bait that caught fish for him for that whole week. I would expect my wood crankbaits to last at least several years fishing for bass here in N.C. I use an epoxy seal coat, acrylic paint, and epoxy or MCU topcoat. They are over-built compared to 95% of the commercial wood bass crankbaits I've fished. But obviously, my "more than good enough" finish for bass baits is "definitely not good enough" for Canadian pike trolling. Nor would I expect one to last as a saltwater bluefish lure. The bottom line is that you have to build them tailored to the fishing environment and target species - whatever they are. And you have to build them tough enough to last for a reasonable time in that environment. "Reasonable time" is open to interpretation.

I've never had DN flake off any plastic surface, painted or not. Are these Strike King baits? Do they come with the bills already clearcoated? If so, the DN solvent may be softening the original clearcoat and causing it to come off as the bills flex during use. That's all I can think of since I've never had DN come off a raw polycarbonate or plastic lip.

I use frisket material but leave the peel-off paper backing on it so I can use it for both sides of the bait and can save the template for other baits. The problem is matching the position of the template on the side of the bait exactly the same on both sides, since the frisket is opaque with the paper backing still on it. My frisket came with a grid printed on the paper backing so I center the grid on the crankbait when I'm outlining the shape of the crankbait on the frisket material. That way, when the template is cut out, I can match it via the grid lines to the tail and nose of the bait. I find it pretty easy to cut with an Xacto knife.

I'm not familiar with red cedar but I'm inclined to think that if it hasn't swollen, water hasn't penetrated into the untreated wood.....yet. I don't know of any wood appropriate for crankbaits that will not absorb water.

Thomas, you can make your lip templates various ways but what I use is a freeware CAD drawing program named PowerDraw. I'm sure there are other drawing programs, this is just the one I found and use. PowerDraw gives you a grid you can size to whatever scale you need - I use a 1mm grid size and zoom the screen in until the lip is easy to see and manipulate. Then you draw your lip design using the tools in the program. Now the important part: print the lip design out on any inkjet or other printer and it will be sized exactly to the scale you used in PowerDraw. I print my templates out on paper and then trace them onto clear plastic sheets and cut out the templates. I save the template file in PowerDraw and I save the actual plastic template for later use. Eventually, you build up a "library" of templates that you can use for other crankbaits. You will find using a drawing program lets you make a template that you KNOW will be the exact size you need and, as importantly, you know the template will be perfectly symmetrical - which is hard to achieve when you are using manual methods.