BobP

There isn't a builder, no matter how 'original', who does not stand on the shoulders of builders who came before him. So I think it's fair for the community to give any claim of originality a hard, critical look. That doesn't mean it's ethical to screw a guy who comes up with a novel lure design and is trying to derive a little income and/or recognition. If the originator is building and selling baits, it's wrong to knock off his design and sell copies. Whether he has legal recourse has zero to do with ethics. The legal side is purely about money and economic harm. It depends on the steps he has taken to protect the design, how deep his pockets are, and his willingness to expend (most times, you can substitute the word "waste" here) his energy to prove a legal point. If history is any guide, patent and copyright protection in the area of fishing lures is mostly a joke in any practical sense. Just ask the originators of the Chatterbait or the Alabama Rig. The only way those guys made money is to partner with a big lure company to churn out large volumes of a popular lure before their competitors can follow suit. It is not unethical or illegal to make a copy of anything as long as its done for your own use and will not be marketed.

Check out the unfinished balsa crankbait bodies sold by Janns Netcraft and lurepartsonline.com. I know they carry a body that is very close to a D-bait in size/shape. D-baits are thru-wired. Whether you do the same is player's choice. As far as finish, check out some of the tutorials here on TU to get ideas on how to finish them. If you are solely doing the baits just to avoid buying D-baits, you'll find the trouble of building one more than the cost of a D-bait and you'll find it takes some experience and some equipment investment to get the results provided by 'the real thing'. Cost is a perfectly valid reason for building your own baits, but it usually can't be the only reason. Most of us really enjoy the process and the craft involved in turning out a good crankbait. Try building some and if you feel the same, you'll be on your way to becomming a TU junkie. D-baits are made from balsa, thru-wired with copper electrical wire, sport polycarbonate lips, and weigh .29 oz with #6 trebles. Pretty simple design but they use fairly sophisticated methods to build them.

You can use a Dremel cylindrical high speed cutter. They have a swirl pattern on their tops that will remove material but you have to control it carefully to keep it on target, then widen the circle it carves out a little to get up to the diameter you need. Non-Dremel Cylinder cutters with tungsten teeth will do the same job faster but they cost around $15 ea. Were it me, I'd go with traditonal painted-on eyes because I like their traditional crankbait look. Whichever method you use, you'll need to recoat the eyes with epoxy to keep the eyes intact.

Chief, I'd also assume the sizes are length x width. I wouldn't try sanding down a lip to make it thinner because it would be lots of work and the end result would probably look pretty crude. Seems it would be much easier to make the slot bigger. Of course, a thicker lip is also heavier, so maybe that enters into your thinking also. Eventually, you will bow to the inevitable and start making your own lips ouf of polycarbonate and circuit board sheet. There is just too limited a choice in commercial shapes and sizes to suit every crankbait you will want to make.

Right now I'm wondering what in the heck anyone could do to make a swimbait so original that someone wouldn't carp about it being a copy of one of the hundreds of swimbaits already on the market. At some point, you have to consider the frame of reference by which you judge whether a bait is a copy of someone else's work. The first guy to ever make a wood crankbait with a lip probably got all bent out of shape when the second guy to make a lipped crankbait sold his first product. "How dare he use balsa wood? How dare he steal my idea of putting a piece of plastic on the front that makes my bait swim like a real fish?" "By God, I'm gonna SUE that thieving s.o.b.!" And so it goes...

I dip and hang baits with DN but some guys prefer brushing it, so maybe they'll chime in. You don't want the DN to accumulate into a pool anywhere on the bait because it will tend to stay liquid and begin to bubble. Brush too much on and it will pool, even on a lure turner. A buddy of mine who brushed DN used to "sling" any extra DN off his baits before putting them on his turner. But he worked in a dirt floored garage. I'd wait a day until the epoxy is cured before applying DN. Epoxy will cure regardless but why be in a hurry?

I feel like guy who says to his friend "tried it once, didn't like it" when asked about several of his preferences. Finally, the friend says "I'd ask about your kids but I guess if you have one, it's an only child". That's the way I feel about painting reels. Hard to do, results never as good as factory, and it tends not to last very long. As far as clearcoats, I'd look at a moisture cured urethane or a two part catalyzed automotive clear. Anything you find in a spray can is not gonna last as long as you want because they just can't take the abuse a reel gets. JMHO

Blazt, I've used Kickn' Bass for years and like it. As well as masking human odors and PROBABLY enhancing the attraction of the bait, it lubricates plastic baits so the hookset is easier and the bait is much less likely to get torn up while playing the fish. A Senko slathered in KNB will normally end up on the line above the hook, with no tears in it. That's a 60 cent saving for every bait not torn up. KNB is based on pure fish oil. How anyone is going to prove scientifically whether it or any other attractant attracts more bites is beyond me, but I feel KNB does work. I started out using KNB garlic. Strong stuff! But I've had just as good results with the KNB anise shad, which has a milder, more pleasant aroma. My thinking is that maybe the popularity of garlic flavored attractants has worked its way into the olfactory memories of the bass population. I've also used Megastrike, which comes as a paste you squeeze out of a plastic tube. Personally, I did not notice any increase in catch rates with that one. I haven't tried Bang or other attractants. Considering the lightening speed with which a bass can suck in and then expell a plastic bait, I think anything that will keep your bait in their mouth is a plus.

Guys, are we beginning to confuse undercoating and color basecoating? I want a smooth, hard, waterproof undercoating that will cover any grain effect before I put on a color basecoat. If the undercoating were white, then it could do double duty but I use epoxy or propionate, neither of which is. To me, the color basecoat is just the first acrylic latex paint I spray so the later colors will show a uniform shading. Now all we have to do is throw "primer" into the mix and we can all be confused. As I understand it, primer is a coating whose purpose is to promote the adhesion of later coatings. You can use any white coating, including white solvent primers or white solvent based spray paints, as a color basecoat but I think it's an open question whether any of them used this way improve adhesion of acrylic latex paints. For that, you probably need to use a specific acrylic paint adhesion promoter.

I spray Polytranspar Superhide white as a color basecoat. There are several water based airbrush paints that have lots of white pigment and have "hide" or "cover" in their names. I like the Superhide White because it dries fast to a hard coating. I get a 16 oz bottle from Wasco and it seems pretty cost efficient. If you're just looking for "cheap", you can use Apple Barrel White, an inexpesive hobby paint with lots of white pigment - but it its large paint grains will not shoot through small airbrush tips and it leaves a surface that is rougher than airbrush brands.

Reducing is mostly about how the paint shoots through your airbrush and there are no rules. If you want to shoot at a lower psi with the tip close to the work in order to do more line details, you'll want the paint to be thin so it will flow at low psi. If your paint is as thick as cream and you blast it at 45 psi and are getting the spray pattern you want, that's also perfectly OK. Some reducers work best when used immediately before shooting them. Some of us reduce paint in the bottle because we know we'll want it thinner and/or we want to extend the paint to economize. Whether to reduce and by how much is totally user-centric.

I always use D2T and it thins out at edges like all epoxies. If you want to stick with epoxy, I think the only thing to do is go to multiple coats. Of course, the edge will eventually disappear as you bury it in successive coats of epoxy, so that might not be what you want!

I undercoat, put on adhesive foil tape, texture the tape on the lure, burnish the edges, paint, and topcoat. To me, after burnishing the edges, they are not enough of an issue to warrant a coat of epoxy.

Instead of teflon tape, try coating the threads with beeswax to prevent air leaks. As far as the splattering, have you checked to make sure you have not mixed up the parts of the tip set with those from a different size tip? I have a Badger Crescendo with 3 tips sets and if I get the pieces mixed up, strange things happen.

Raven, epoxy always draws away from sharp edges as it cures and makes the coating very thin in those areas. I've never heard of any brand or technique that will avoid that, so it's just the nature of the beast. If sharp edges are unavoidable, you need a different topcoat.

Bixie, I have baits dipped in DN and baits topcoated in 2 part auto urethane. Both are perfectly good "factory-like" clearcoats. As far as which is harder, I don't think there's enough difference to choose between the two in any practical sense. Maybe you can find literature on the web that lists a scientific hardness test for a particular brand of auto clear and specific brand of moisture cured urethane but I think you would be splitting hairs in this case. Not only are both "good enough", they're both "really good". The real differences revolve around practical application and storage techniques. As a bass bait hobby builder, I use DN because I work in the garage, like dipping and don't want to worry about auto clearcoat safety precautions. If I did baits for money, there's no question I would spray auto clear because it will give you a more consistently perfect topcoat. I would also choose an auto clear if I thought building a thick topcoat was necessary. Dn works fine when single-coated but you can have problems with multiple coats. You can learn to use any topcoat and get really good results.

D2T doesn't "dry" - it cures, so recoating doesn't affect hardening of the first coat. It's usually 'finger proof' after about 5 hrs, so I agree with BBM. I read about epoxy tests on rod guides that said a microscopic exam of double coated guides could find no evidence of a line separating the first and second coat, indicating that the two coats were fully integrated into a single mass as long as the recoating was done within 24-36 hrs. From that, I would say that there's no need to scuff or sand recently applied epoxy before you apply a second coat.

Ben, guys usually want the spine of the rod to be either up or down, for the esthetics if nothing else. It's naturally disconcerting to sight down a custom rod you just got and see the tip bending off to the left or right. As far as spiral wraps go, they always start at the top of the blank and transition to the bottom, so the spine is still in line, whether it's turned up or down.

I don't know if there is a 5.4 gear set for a CU200, but there are 5.0 gears for a CU200B5 and 6.2 gears for the standard CU200. You need the big Drive Gear and the smaller Pinion Gear to make the change. You can check with Shimano or with Southwestern Parts - they may be able to tell you if a 5.4 gear set is available. Manufacturers often use the same parts in other reels from their lineup, so a knowledgeable parts rep can often recommend a part from another reel that will do what you want and fit properly too. BTW, if you're looking for a cranking gear set - just something faster than the 3.8 gears, the 5.0 works great - and it also cranks smoother than the 6.2. It's what I still use for deep diving crankbaits.

A Dremel is my main crankbait making tool but while I have lots of different attachments, I use 3 the most: fine sanding drums for rounding over baits; a millimeter drill bit set (from American Science & Surplus) for drilling holes for line ties and clearing finish from the eyes; and a Dremel wood shaping cylinder for drilling ballast holes and eye sockets. You need the set of different size collets to use the drill bits. I cut out my lips with Wiss metal snips and sand them 'down to the line" with a fine sanding drum. Then I polish the edges of Lexan lips with one of the wool polishing cylinders. I also have a larger, more powerful Foredom rotary tool that takes up to 1/4" shank tools. It works faster but is not as handy to use, so I most often use the Dremel. My preference may have something to do with using the Dremel for 10 years and just being used to its quirks. Dremels are pretty sturdy tools and the company is owned by Porter Cable. They have great warranty service. I take mine apart occasionally and blow the sawdust out of the innards with a compressor. Other than that, they seem to keep on tick'in.

Trix, maybe that's a comment on the "pretty paint thing". Great paint makes you feel great when you fish a lure. That's useful but I think the fish are less interested in art. My nephew was telling me about a "hot color" on a lake where he competes regularly. Guys were paying a premium for baits custom painted in that pattern, so I asked him to send me one to see what the hullaballoo was about. #7 Shad Rap, White with very sloppy random freehand green stripes - like a 3rd grader's version of the old Clark Gable pattern. Most TUers would have been too embarrassed to post it on the TU Gallery. But it was selling like hot cakes. Go figure! I think you can over-think any aspect of building crankbaits. Just build'em and paint'em the best you can and see what the bass think. You'll often be surprised, one way or the other.