mark poulson

You might want to contact some of the plastisol suppliers here in the US, like Bears, and ask them how to get it to Denmark. I'm pretty sure they've had this question asked before, and might have an answer for you.

If it smells funny, it's probably not good for you to breathe, period.

That's a great find! I'm sooooo jealous! Hahaha

Vic, I understand what you're saying. Each material has it's own virtues and drawbacks. But Ben's right. No matter what material you choose to work with, a dust mask, minimum, is really important. I am a retired carpenter. I worked with wood, and in construction dust, most of my life. When I was younger, I used to love the smell of sawdust, deisel, and all of the chemicals and materials I worked with. I still love the smell of wood. But prolonged exposure to all that stuff made my sinuses super sensitive to any kind of dust or chemical smell. Even a woman's perfume gives me a headache now. I guess it's kind of like exposure to UV rays from the sun. Over time, the damage builds up. So, whichever material you choose to build your lures from, protect yourself.

I used some 15 lb braid I had lying around.

Frank, You make it look so easy, you're amazing.

It's not particular woods, it's the sealers I've used. When I used solvent based (oil based) sealers and paints, I had no problems, but, when I switched to water based air brush paints I found any wood I used for my jointed swimbaits, from pine to fir to oak right on up to poplar, all developed leaks, either where the hardware penetrated the top coat, where the joints bumped into each other, or where I hit a rock and dented the top coat and paint. Anywhere water got past the top coat, it got between the wood and the paint scheme, and bubbled the finish, or caused it to split. I tried polyvinyl sealer, wood hardner, and even thinned epoxy as a sealer, but never could get a bait waterproof. Once I switched to PVC, all waterproofing issues disappeared. Plus it is hard, so it doesn't dent the same way wood dents when I introduce it to the occasional rock. The worst that happens is the paint gets chipped a little, but I can keep on fishing that lure without worrying about it soaking up water, like I did with wood. For one piece lures, like gliders and cranks, and even big walking baits, wood works fine, as long as I watch where I cast them. I just switched to PVC for almost everything because it works, and cuts so much time off my lure building process. I can be sitting at my computer in the morning, think of a lure I want to build, and have it built and ready for test swimming by noon. If I'm really in a hurry, I can paint it and top coat it with three dip coats that same day, too. I could never do that with wood. I take my lure building time wherever I can steal it during the day. Sometimes I don't go out to the garage for days on end. So I really appreciate the freedom that PVC gives me by speeding the building process.

I have never case any resins, but Larry Dahlberg has a website that has lots of info. Google him, and check it out.

Ed, When I use either the plano dividers or the margarine tops for tail, I sand it to simulate fin lines, and then color with a sharpie or two. For the soft plastic tails, I wound up making a two part POP mold and pour my own now, so color is no problem if I use a light color or clear, and flake. I tried coloring details and rays onto my soft plastic tails with sharpies, and found that the color bled and eventually became blended together. I still do it, but only lightly.

Thanks Nathan. You saved me a lot of research. I'll look it up on the internet, and check it out. But I'm probably not going to get that deeply involved in learning a new process with new materials. I'm thinking the soft skin isn't critical, except for the teen bass that Butch Brown fishes for. For him, the search for big bass is almost a religion. He doesn't even count bass under 10lbs any more. I heard him speak at the Anglers Marine Bass-A-Thon yesterday, and he is passionate. Even though I've known him for years, I was amazed how deeply he cares about the fish he catches, and how committed his is to making any bait he uses perform to it's maximum potential. He said one of his big bass died in his livewell, so he called a DFG biologist and gave it to him The biologis placed it's age at well over 10 years, so Butch said that bass had seen lots of Huddlestons, Triple Trouts, and every soft swimbait out there. He said, for bass that old and experience educated, the smallest detail that's off will turn them away. But, for most of the fish under 10 lbs, I think they can still be fooled by the hard skinned baits most of us make.

Douglas, You're right, of course, wood is a great material for baits, and is probably one of the oldest used. And I do seem to chime in about AZEK a lot. But I am a carpenter, and wood is in my blood, so to speak. There is no better material for lively crankbaits than balsa, in my opinion. I enjoy making lures, but I enjoy fishing them more. I started out just trying to reproduce a borrowed Pupfish that I broke. I didn't want to build lures, just replace the one I'd broken. And wood was a natural way to go for me, since I had all the woodworking tools and skills needed to make a replacement. I didn't want to get into mold making and resin casting, since I knew I could shape and carve something very close to the broken lure out of wood. There was no need to learn a whole new process. I found I had a knack for making those surface gliders, and it was easy and fun. I started out using wood, and oil-based paints, and gradually moved up to air brushing water based paints to try and duplicate some of the great work I saw here on TU. That brought the whole issue of sealing the wood to the forefront for me, especially when I began making jointed swimbaits. My gliders and swimbaits worked, and caught fish, and pretty soon the guys in my club were bugging me to make them some, too. I began selling baits, and I stood behind whatever I sold, including repairing damaged lures. So finding a way to seal wooden swimbaits so that the finish didn't eventually fail was a never ending saga for me. And, since time is money, I looked for how to do things faster and more efficiently. The process I had for building wooden lures had a lot of drying time involved. I would shape a lure, seal it, let it dry, add hardware and ballast, seal it again, let it dry again for another day, paint it, top coat it and turn that epoxied lure for another two days, and before I knew it a week had passed. Even though I made them in batches of six, it was still a time consuming process. When I was turned on to AZEK decking by another TU member I was thrilled. Immediately, it cut my lure making process down to two days for jointed swimbaits, and one day for cranks. Because it is hard, strong, buoyant and waterproof, I was able to switch to lighter urethane top coats without fear of water intrusion, and abandon epoxy top coats completely. Initially, I built walking baits, gliders, jointed swimbaits, poppers, and crank with the decking, and it worked really well. I only recently began using the AZEK trimboard, which is even more buoyant, for all my cranks and topwater baits. As I said, I'd rather fish a bait than build it, even though I do enjoy making them. So when I found AZEK, I was able to streamline my lure making process and that lets me build a crank or bait, and test swim it that day. The trimboard it white, and I've caught fish up to 5lbs on unpainted lures while I was test swimming them. If I'm really ambitious, I will bring it back from the test pond, clean it, paint it, and top coat it that day, too. I typically let my three dip urethane top coat cure for another day before I fish the finished lure. But I've found that putting a coat of clear Sally Hansen Hard as Nails polish over the dried urethane lets me fish the lure the next day. And it makes my lures almost hook-rash proof. Plus, there are a lot of neat nail polishes that can add sparkle, flash, and color more easily than trying to airbrush it on. I have had my top coat fail, due to hook rash or rock encounters, but, unless I make a mistake with my hardware installation, I never have problems that a quick drying, paint touchup, and coating with clear nail polish can't fix. And I can continue fishing a lure with a nicked paint job without fear of having it suck up water and being ruined. I still have lots of my wooden swimbaits on my bench that had catastrophic failures due to water intrusion under the top coat, swelling the wood and bubbling the epoxy, just to remind me of why I switched. So my turning to the dark side with AZEK is more a marriage of convenience than of passion. It works, and saves me time. I'm writing all this not to argue about what's better, but to share something I've found that has made lure making much easier, and fun, for me, so others who have encountered the same problems I faced with wood have an alternative.

Ed, I use three different tails. I pour my own soft plastic tails, or buy them from Capt. Sully. They screw onto a wire spring I epoxy into the back of the tail section. I also make harder tails out of clear plastic sheet, like the tops for margarine tubs, and glue them into a slot in the tail section. Last, for little two and three piece baits I make tails from Plano dividers, and attach them with split rings to the last section. The soft plastic tails are the most subtle and life-like. The others are more for action presentations.

I was at the Anglers Marine Bass-A-Thon yesterday, and Butch Brown did a workshop about how he fishes swimbaits, and what he throws. He's the guy who has several hundred bass over 10lbs, and a five fish limit of 54lbs, all on swimbaits in the Castaic afterbay. The swimbait he was talking about yesterday was a resin core two piece, with a soft, air filled tail. But the thing that was really unique about it was the soft rubber skin over the foiled body. The bait he talked about is called the silent swimmer, because it doesn't make any click or rattling noise as it's fished. He said it took him a year to figure out how to fish it in all situations, but he fishes 300 days a year. Does anyone here have any idea what kind of soft, transparent rubber they might have used for the bait? Here's a link: http://www.westernba...bat-t81319.html

Bob hit it on the head. D2T is a glue. It's designed to set up hard, strong, and rigid, with no flexibility, which might allow a joint or some embedded hardware to creep. Etex, and other decoupage epoxies, are designed for covering large wooden surfaces, like bars and table tops. Since wood expands and contracts with temperature and humidity changes, those epoxies are designed to remain flexible enough to move with the wood. They typically have longer hardening times, and require at least two coats to reach the same thickness as one coat of D2T. When I used Etex, I would usually put on three coats, turning each 12 hours between coats on my ferris wheel lure turner. The search for the "perfect" topcoat is the holy grail. I hear they're bringing back Harrison Ford and Sean Connery to do the sequel.

Thanks Nathan.

Nathan, How soon after curing can you fish a lure that's coated with Solarez?

Great looking bait! The only thing I might suggest is purely cosmetic. I angle the joint cuts on my swimbaits, so the eye is somewhat concealed in the V of the joint. I still round off the pin face of the joints, but I leave the eye section as a V. And I pocket the eye sockets in my pin section instead of making a thru slot. You can try drilling a hole in the rounded face of the pin section where the eye will hit, oval it a little to allow play for the hinge, and it will conceal the eye a little, and keep the eye cut confined to the rounded joint section, without extending back into the flat face of the bait. As I said, it's a cosmetic detail, and not at all critical to your bait working, as it looks like it does already. Congratulations. P.S. One functional thing you might want to try is beveling your bait's profile, so it's thinner at the belly than at the back. I found that allows me to burn my baits at any speed without them rolling. My baits typically go from 7/8" at the back to 5/8" at the belly, with the taper starting down 1/3 from the back. It's not exact, but it eliminates rolling.

That is some interesting stuff. I'm thinking it would really work well for prototype of soft plastic baits, too, since it melts at 130-200 degrees. Thanks for the link!

Since it sounds like shorter, repeated exposures help retain gloss, why not hit one side of the bait for a minute, rotate to the other side for a minute, and just repeat until the resin is hard? I know I'm probably missing something here. That sounds too easy.

Is denseness even a word???

Erick, Try holding your jigs by the eye with a pair of needle nose pliers when you dip them. I rarely get paint into my eyes that way. Just be sure the pliers have coated handles, or they may eventually get too hot to hold, unless you wear gloves. The pair I use are cheap aluminum pliers, and they work just fine. That really speeds up the powder coating process for me.

If the paint has an acetone solvent base, and comes in glass jars, could you put the jars in a larger glass jar partially filled with acetone, so there is enough evaporated acetone around them to keep them from drying out? The original Mend It soft plastic glue can in bottles that allowed the acetone to evaporate, so it had a very short shelf life. After they switched to different bottles, the problem was greatly reduced. I keep my Mend It, and my crazy glue and nail polish, in a glass jelly jar on my boat, and they last a lot longer because their exposure to the open air is limited.

Was the site down for service over the weekend? I couldn't access it. I kept getting an error message. Talk about Jonesing!

No, but if you go back to the site, and type AZEK trim board in the search, a variety of stuff comes up. I bought 12' piece of white 1" net by 3 1/2" through my local lumber yard, but they are a commercial yard. Lowes doesn't seem to carry that, or they don't list it. I like the 1" net because it lets me build thicker stuff without laminating, but the 3/4" will work for almost all of the cranks we build, so you can use it if that's all you can get. I like the white because my baits are easier to see when I test swim them unpainted. You might give your local Lowes a call, and talk to someone in the lumber ordering department to see if they can order you something that's not on the site. Also, try going to the AZEK website to see if there is another dealer near you. I know Home Depot can get it for you. I had them bid the AZEK decking for a job. Do get the trim board, and not the decking, if you're making crank baits. The decking is as buoyant as poplar, and harder. The trimboard is even more buoyant than the decking, because it isn't structural, so it doesn't need the denseness or strength of the decking.