BobP

I usually see some small bubbles in the prop during the first dip as the solution initially soaks into the surface. The 2nd dip will usually pop the bubbles but I sand out any few that remain after the 3rd dip. Balsa is the most buoyant wood because it contains more air than other species. Buoyancy makes lively baits and that's the only reason for using it because it's also the most fragile wood. If you replace all the air with prop, you have a much more solid and durable bait but one that is much less buoyant since prop does not float. I don't know the buoyancy of balsa impregnated with prop but I doubt it is greater than some of the light hardwoods like white cedar or paulownia, which are naturally more durable and would require less processing. But in the end, if your baits have the action and durability you want there's no reason to second guess the wood choice.

I use Elmer's indoor/outdoor water based wood filler in a squeeze tube. If I have to make a structural repair, like filling in an old lip slot, I use an epoxy putty log. On the seams of a split balsa bait, I use Elmer's indoor wood filler which looks and acts essentially like spackling compound. I figure you're covering any repair with undercoating, paint, and topcoating so the inherent strength of the filler is unimportant. The indoor Elmer's stuff sands very easily, which is good on a balsa repair since anything tougher is hard to sand smooth without distorting the surrounding soft balsa.

Yes, you'll also need an Iwata air hose, or at least an Iwata adapter fitting if you already have another brand airbrush/hose. Iwata a/b's are designed to work at a maximum of 45 psi. More 'normal' is anything from 20-30 psi. A moisture trap is a good idea. All that stuff (don't forget male/female adapters as needed) except the hose is available at most home centers in the air tool department. Also get some PTFE (aka Teflon) plumber's tape to make sure all the connections are air tight.

I have a Revolution BR and an HP-B+; .3 mm versus .2mm. I end up using the Revolution BR 90% of the time. A .3mm airbrush tip is large enough to shoot pearls and flake, small enough to do color shading so I think the Revolution BR is ideal..... plus it's the cheapest airbrush in Iwata's Japanese product line at around $80. The small cup size is no drawback for me. It's enough to shoot a heavy double coat of Polytranspar Superhide White on an average size bass bait, which is the most capacity I ever need. On the rare occasion when I need more paint, it's not much of a chore to pick up a squeeze bottle and shoot a little more paint into the cup. You have to be careful in sizing Iwata cups since a larger cup often also means the brush automatically comes with a larger tip size. My Iwata HP-B is a nice airbrush but the .2mm tip is small enough that it will clog on flake airbrush paint - and it costs 50% more.

When I dip lures in propionate dissolved in acetone, I just dip them for a few seconds - I don't soak the bait in the solution. I'm looking for the prop to adhere well and acetone is a thin enough solvent that it penetrates immediately, transporting some propionate into the wood fibers and forming a good bond. I generally do as many as 10 dips to get a good smooth film, then let the lure rest overnight to allow all the acetone to evaporate and get hard. If you saturate the lure with acetone, I would worry that some will inevitably be left sealed inside the wood, which might cause problems with the finish or cause the prop or epoxy to soften later. I think the soaking idea is originally from saltwater bait makers who soak cedar lures in linseed oil, let them dry for a few weeks, and paint them with solvent based paint to guarantee against water damage when fishing for toothy critters. Don't know what you fish for in Ireland, maybe your method makes sense if it's mostly pike, but if so I would probably not use balsa in the first place.

Look, the ideal thing for a buyer would be to come to you and see exactly the bait, with exactly the color scheme they want, at a price they want to pay, ready to rock and roll. In other words - instant gratification. That's not realistic but it is what it is. Some guys will want your baits and will be willing to order blanks and send them to you, accepting the delays involved. Some will not because it is a complication and delay in gratification. It's just the nature of the beast when you deal with customers.

Nice cover, but we know your hydroponics are in a room built below your crankbait shop!

Neat stuff, Ben!

On plastic bodies, I cut a round cap out of a soda can with scissors, superglue it over the hole, and sand the edges down so it disappears. That leaves the cavity as it was before you took out or added anything to it. Those are bass baits. Might the patch be pierced by a toothy critter? Maybe.

If you check out an art supply store or an online art store like Dick Blick, etc, they sell frisket material. It's an adhesive plastic film intended for stencil making. It comes in a roll and has a peel-off paper backing. Draw your design on the paper backing and It's easy to cut accurately with an xacto knife (which is its big advantage; other materials can be hard to cut accurately). For crankbaits, I cut a stencil but I don't peel off the paper backing, I just hold it against the lure as I airbrush. Dry the stencil or wipe it dry and then flip it over and do the opposite side of the bait with the same stencil. And since you never took off the backing, you can save the stencil for later baits. A 12" wide roll of frisket is fairly cheap and will last for years when used for crankbait stencils. If you are regularly doing one particular crankbait model, you might benefit from using a vacuum formed stencil made from tougher material. But as a hobbiest, I don't paint enough of a single model to warrant the effort.

I'm wondering the same thing. If you just want to silence the rattles, I would drill a small hole, center the rattle and fix it in place with superglue.

First, could you tune the bait to run straight? How did it cast? Did it dive to the expected depth? How would you describe the action, given the type of crankbait? Enough, not enough. or too much? Regular thump or not? Was the thump sharp or muted (compared to other baits you like) ? Did the bait plane off, spin, hunt, or do anything unexpected at different retrieve speeds? Different style baits have different "desirable qualities". A fat body square bill should be buoyant and come through wood cover without snagging. A deep diver should cast well, dive to the design depth, and run straight enough to hit submerged targets. So you need to ask questions tailored to the bait. I'm not asking questions about the paint scheme or catch rates, just about the performance characteristics. Likes/dislikes about paint and fishing results are so variable that the answers aren't of much use to me - although I like to hear good reports just like everyone!

The Venture Brite-bak is the best I've used. It's designed for stained glass artists, is very thin and tough, with an adhesive backing. They used to sell a gold foil but it was more a brass color than gold and it would discolor under most topcoats. They discontinued it, don't know if they later came up with a new gold foil that works better. I'm with Rayburn Guy on using their silver foil. Spray a little Createx transparent yellow over it and you have a nice gold finish.

I think an angle of 45 degrees is almost "standard" on shallow running balsa baits. If you front-weight the bait to swim with a nose-down attitude, that effectively increases the lip angle, which decreases the running depth. You didn't really expect straightforward answers, did ya? You could do worse than copying the general configuration and weight of a KVD or Lucky Craft shallow runner.

The DA in your mixture is causing the wood grain to pop. I use D2T to seal baits but only put in sufficient DA to get the mixture thinned enough to flow well and extend the brush time so I can seal 4-5 baits; the DA is never more than 10%. I would recommend a non-alcohol solvent like MEC or lacquer thinner - but in my experience nothing works as well as DA. As far as preserving 3D effects, D2T is the thickest, best leveling topcoat around, so if 3D preservation is critical to you think about using a different topcoat like moisture cured urethane (eg Dick Nite S81) or an automotive urethane. There just aren't that many categories of topcoat that meet the needs of crankbait makers.

I don't think paint and a topcoat will have any effect.

I use the same paints except the chroma and haven't had the same problem. The only time I've seen this with DN is when I dipped something coated with a solvent based color or a petroleum based undercoating.

Matt, you're probably right about smaller jars but I feel like I gotta draw the line somewhere! I got almost a year of use out of my last DN quart, so I'm not complaining though I lost 1/3 of it to curing eventually - even with Bloxygen and quick dips! I decant a quart into 2 16 oz jars. I use one for dipping and the other to top off the dip jar. Most of my bass baits are short enough to dip in a Ball/Mason jar but not all of them - especially jerkbaits. For them, a salsa jar is the perfect fit. So I may use a salsa jar to dip and a Mason jar for storage next time around. I like DN. I like dipping. Enough that I'm not gonna get wrapped around the axle if I lose some of it eventually. It's only money, right?

Yep, different guys, different tools. Everyone develops their own style of building as they go along. You start out, hit a problem and then get a tool or think of a procedure (or ask for help here on TU) to overcome the problem. An idea that most guys eventually get: good crankbaits are all about symmetry so you want to do as much layout and measuring as you can to keep them straight. Yes, marking up a 2" bait blank with a ruler and compass is a PITA. The only thing worse is eyeballing it and ending up with a lopsided bait that's worthless. I didn't understand this when I started out but now think of my compass, ruler, notebook, and digital scale as essential tools.

I use a scroll saw for cutting out the basic blank shape and the lip slot - a band saw does the same, faster. A Dremel with sanding cylinder and/or a good carving knife does the rounding over. I use Dremel bits to drill hardware and ballast holes. I cut Lexan or circuit board lips with metal snips and refine the shape with the Dremel sanding cylinder. If you want seriously good looking lures, you are going to want to paint them with an airbrush/compressor. Sandpaper and a brush to apply an epoxy topcoat round out the tool set. If you use epoxy topcoats, a home built lure turner quickly becomes a "must have".

I used to religiously test the trebles before tying on a crankbait and often touched them up with a diamond hone. Most often these were VMC or Mustad trebles on factory baits. I didn't mind honing them but didn't like removing the anti-rust coating and then having to resharpen the hooks to remove rust every time I fished a bait. Nowadays, I usually change out the factory trebles for Gamakatsus and find they seldom become dull during fishing because they are tempered better. Maybe I'm getting a little lazy too, but hook sharpness seems to have receded as an issue since I started using premium hooks.

I used the "equal puddles" method for years and never had a failure to harden. But I noticed that some batches were more prone to yellowing than others for whatever reason. To eliminate the possibility that the yellowing is caused by inexact measuring, I've started to use syringes to measure epoxy. That way, I'm SURE the parts are exactly equal. And I'm learning exactly how much epoxy it takes to do my baits, so I'm probably saving a little epoxy too. I don't understand weighing epoxy since the manufacturer specifies measuring by volume - but no harm, no foul I guess! That said, my digital scale gets plenty of exercise every time I build a bait. The only way I know to get truly repeatable results on a series of baits is to weigh the components and keep a record of of the build so next month or next year, I can build a bait the same way - or make informed decisions on how to change things for better performance.

Swede passed away but I think Palmetto Balsa is also a source. PM him to find out. Propionate works well as an undercoat and is pretty cheap stuff compared to most alternatives.