mark poulson

In my never ending quest to copy, I made some Barry Sterud balsa crank knock offs out of PVC trimboard. The first ones I made I left 3/4" thick, and tapered from the belly hook area forward to the nose, and back to the tail. They swim with a hard X, and no wobble. Barry let me compare my baits to his, and his baits are thinner, so I tried the same bait shape in 1/2" PVC, with the bills narrowed accordingly. The new baits also X, but they wobble dramatically, looking like they are almost going to roll as they are retrieved, but still run true. My experience with crank bait building has always been that thicker, more rounded baits will wobble more, but it seems to be the exact opposite in this case. Any ideas why this might be happening?

I had exactly the same problem a few years ago, and Baitjunky's high temp glitter was the key. Leonard actually PM'd me and suggest it, and it's been great.

Those are beautiful!

Just so I wouldn't feel singled out, Barry beat everyone in our Club tournament yesterday, using his balsa crank for all but one his weigh in fish. And his non-boater won that side of the tournament. He's on fire!

Cami, My Japanese is pretty limited, but I think it said "Thank you Cami for the idea" somewhere on that page. Hahaha

I have not been able to bend circut board. I think it's because it seems to be a layer of mesh sandwiched between two layers of some kind of hard, rigid resin. I do know it is hard to glue to itself. I was hoping to add a different shaped lip to a crank I'd already made, but I couldn't get two test pieces to stick to each other with super glue. Maybe epoxy will work, but I haven't tried that yet.

I think only you can be the final judge of whether it works for you. To me, the real test is of a clear coat is four things First, is it compatible with your paint? Your stuff seems to be if you dip it, but it must have some solvent in it, because you said it dripped a little paint back into your dipping jar. If it does work out after curing, I might think about dripping over something else, although a drop of paint in a quart of finish is unlikely to even matter. Second, is it water resistant enough to stand up to being fished? Only fishing it will determine that. I have used AC1315 successfully on lure, but it will soften if left in water overnight, or on a wet boat carpet overnight. It holds up just fine to actual fishing. Third, is it tough enough to protect your paint when the lure is fished? Again, only fishing the lure will tell you that. Last, will it diminish or enhance your paint job? Some "clear" coats will dull metalics and pearls, some will really make them shine. Only letting your finish cure out will give you this answer. Every clear coat has it's pluses and minuses. I am impatient, so I use Solarez UV resin for my clear coat. I like that I can cure it in a light box in three minutes, and be hard and ready to fish. But it has some kind of wax in it that shows as a fog on dark colored baits. Heating the resin in a double boiler with hot water (thank you whichever TU member gave me that tip) so it goes on thinner when dipped eliminates the fogging, but it does allow the needle sharp hook points to penetrate sometimes, because it is so thin. It's not a problem for me, because I build with PVC, but I would leave it thicker on wooden baits.

Could you cut just the rear portion of the mylar tube in half, and orient it in the mold so that the hook would come up through the cut portion and not snag the mylar?

Has anyone found some mylar bits that can be mixed into plastisol like glitter?

We who cannot create learn to copy really well! Hahaha

Richard, I can never find that magic retrieve, where it hunts without rolling. I get big barrel rolls without a split ring. Do you pause it when you change direction?

Further update: I used braid to replace a broken reinforcing wire on one of my spinnerbaits. It is a royal pain to use. I had forgotten. I'll stick with 28 gauge wire coated with super glue. It only takes two minutes to wrap and coat with the wire.

Erick, Since the lure uses a length of wire attached to the spinnerbait bend as a leader, I think you'd have to use a spinnerbait with a closed loop bend, or close the R bend with some wire like I do, and then add your wire leader to that with something like a snap connection at the spinnerbait side.

I am a hobby pourer, so this is just a home made method, not how to do production, by any means. I do laminates by pouring my "accent" colored plastic first by hand with a pinched Norpro silicone cup, and then injecting my main color. As long as the main color is 330+- it melts itself into the accent, and it's seamless. The hot plastic will flow around any drips from the hand pour, and incorporate them, too. If I were trying to get the effect in the picture, I'd probably do some drops of heavily flaked accent colors where I wanted them to wind up, and then shoot my main color. I might also play around with placing the glitter into my mold where I wanted it first, using a small artists brush. The spray PAM I use would hold it long enough to let me close the mold and shoot my main color. It looks like whoever made those baits used really big (.040) glitter, too, and that would help.

The main benefit of using two hinges per joint, aside from doubled strength, is that the sections can't roll.

I always think of how much a bait X's as wiggle, like in how flat sided cranks wiggle side to side, pivoting around the belly hanger more or less, but staying pretty much upright. How much a bait rolls, to me, is wobble, as in how fat, rounded cranks wobble more side to side than flat sided baits. I'm guessing it's because the water going over the back of the bait is deflected to the sides, so the air foil shape creates "lift", pulling the side of the bait up slightly, and the bill causes the lift to shift from one side of the bait to the other as the bait X's. (That was for you Dave. Hahaha) Because their line tie is up high on the back, lipless rattle trap-type baits seem to do both. I think it's because the direction of pull brings the belly's shape into play, too.

It sounds like a silver buddy-type insert to me.

You will get better action if you use an O ring. Plus, moving the line attachment up a bit from the actual line tie will help the bait run truer.

Update: I have fished the same reinforced spinnerbait for six trips now, and boat flipped several fish over 5lbs, plus lots of 2-4 lbs. In the past, my spinnerbait would have opened up and been bent back enough to make me nervous about it breaking. No more. The best part is my old back doesn't have to bend down to lip them anymore! I did have the 22 gauge wire break, so I redid it with 24 gauge. I'm thinking about trying braid for reinforcement again. That stuff lasts forever!

That is slick!!!

Tyler, One thing that will be key for your enjoying air brush painting, and being successful, is to learn how to clean your air brush quickly and thoroughly. A lot of the air brush supply sites have videos on both painting and cleaning. Air Brush Restorer is worth it's weight in gold, and you can keep it in a wide mouth jar and reuse it forever! (Thank you Ben!!!) I get mine here: http://www.coastairbrush.com/products.asp?cat=59 Scroll down until you see it on the left hand side. I keep a tupperware full of clean water at the back of my paint station, so I can backflush for ten seconds between colors with my finger over the nozzle. That forces the cleaning water back through the air brush. I also back off the nozzle assembly a little, and back flush that, too. It gets the paint out of the tiny atomization holes in the air brush. That makes cleaning really easy. I change the water for each painting session. Clean water is really important for each session, so you're not backflushing old paint through the air brush. Every six months or so I disassemble my Iwata, and soak all the parts in the air brush restorer overnight. Even though I think I am thorough when I'm doing my regular cleaning ritual, I'm always amazed at how much crap the restorer gets out. If you already know all this, sorry for the repetition.

I've also had good success with Baitjunky's plastisol.

I would look at making a silicone mold of a similar sized rattle trap/type bait, then use a Silver Buddy style bait that fits inside as an insert, and pour some really hard plastisol around it. The metal insert would take all the stress, so the plastisol should hold up to a day's fishing. Since you would have a mold, you could just repour your bait if/when it gets torn up.

Les, Please share which brand of plastic is more transparent.