mark poulson

Nathan, I think you're right. I'll find out Saturday. Fingers crossed!

Glenn, That's why I started T'ing my hooks, too, to cut down on hook rash on my jointed swim baits. Someone here at TU suggested it years ago. They said they did it with their walleye cranks, or else the hooks would wear right through the plastic after a day of trolling. I was just playing around with my hooks on my 1.5 and 2.5 cranks to try and make them snag less, since I throw them into flooded brush in the spring, when I figured out that a T'd hook with the single hook up on the tail would cut down on snags. If I cut off the down facing hook on the belly treble, like Nathan suggests, it would probably help a lot, too. That;s my next project.

Talk about taking one for the team! That looks like it hurt like crazy. Carelessness that only hurts you earns sympathy, in my book. We've all been there, done that, in one form or another. I won't mention trying to drill a ballast hole in a crank without removing the treble hooks first, and holding the crank by hand. Stuff happens. I hope it heals fast.

Glenn, I was thinking of installing the trebles with the single hook facing down, and cutting that one off, so the double hook that was left would kind of cradle the belly of the bait. I already do something similar with the tail hook on shallow running cranks. I "T" them, so two of the hooks are splayed out to the side flat, and the third is at 90 degrees from them. I install them so the single hook is facing up. That has cut down on snags a lot, but doesn't seem to affect the hookup ratio. Here's a picture of a "T"d treble: http://www.tackleunderground.com/community/gallery/image/5692-t-ing-trebles/

You're on a roll!!! My first lure was a replacement for a Pupfish I'd borrowed and broken. I gave it to my fishing partner to replace his "treasure". Once I figured out how to make them, I just tweaked them until they worked, and fished them until they either died, or were taken by a fish that broke me off. I don't really value the lures I make that much. But the knowledge I gained in making them is priceless. And making them is fun.

Hide glue is one of the earliest glues used in furniture making. I often wonder who figured out that boiling hide and bones would make a glue. Maybe that's where the saying "Sticks to your ribs" comes from. Hahaha Because it can be dissolved (I don't know which solvent is used), it is reversible, so you can take a loose or broken joint apart without machining and repair it. Since furniture, particularly chairs, take a lot of torque, joints do tend to loosen, or fail, so this feature makes hide glue attractive, particularly with antiques and older furniture.

You might also try scuff sanding your epoxy sealer with either fine sandpaper, or a brillo pad, to get a better mechanical bond for your primer.

Well, I bit the bullet and removed the single hook from three of the cranks, and installed belly and tail trebles. But I'm keeping the others for just what Ben talked about, fishing deep next to weed lines. They are more weedless that cranks with trebles, and I'm hoping the fish will eat them differently than the shallow busting fish, which seem to swipe at cranks to stun them a lot of the time. Nathan, I have actually thought of doing something like that, but haven't tried it. Yet... I have a small frog hook on my workbench, and I've been trying to think of how to incorporate into a crank. Cutting the bottom hook off a treble would do the same thing. Hmmm..... I never thought of using a trailer hook on them, Bassrecord. I'll give it some consideration. My first thought is it would make them less weedless, and throw off the balance. But it's not hard to do, so I'll definitely give it a try. Thanks for the idea.

Hahaha!!!

For me, thin coats dry more completely, so I wind up with a better paint job. Thick coats of acrylic paint never seem to get really hard.

I give them a quick dip in clean acetone. I hold them by the bill, and do a quick dip. QUICK! Acetone is the solvent for most of the plastics used by lure makers, so it removes a minute amount of the surface, and gives me a virgin plastic surface to paint. I say Quick, because it will also dissolve the glue joint that holds the two halves of most plastic lures together if you let it soak. I spray my water based air brush paints directly over the cleaned plastic, and don't have any adhesion problems. Just be sure to heat set each thin coat as you go.

Dieter, Just be sure the 2 minute epoxy is waterproof. I know the crazy glue is waterproof....I've tried to wash it off when I got my fingers stuck together, and it didn't work. Hahaha

Good news, bad news. The good news is they swim, and don't hang up, and catch less grass than cranks with trebles. The bad news is the single hook doesn't catch them like trebles. I was throwing to some busting fish yesterday so I felt the bass hit the lure multiple times but no hookup. I'm sure the same lure with trebles would have been successful. The hits on the single hook were serious hits, but no hookups. Grrrr.... Now I have a bunch of single hook cranks that I'm going to add belly treble to, to see if that helps. Otherwise, they're just pretty paper weights.

If you're building with a softer wood, a carving knife, or even a sharp exacto knife, should remove enough material quickly to reduce the amount of hand sanding. I use an oscillating belt sander, which has two different diameter drive wheels at either end, and I can get my lures shaped and rounded pretty quickly with it. I use a small vibrating sander to do the final smoothing. I don't worry about exact symmetry. I just check them by eye. I also don't mass produce lures, or I'd probably make one of Pete's grooved sanding wheels to save time, and increase consistency.

I am guessing that the small pieces of wood we use for lures can be dried a lot faster than the 2X material we use in construction. And the balsa we build with is already kiln dried. In thinking about it more, I'm wondering if it's just the trapped air being heated and expanding, causing the bubbling. Or maybe there is enough of a difference in the coefficients of thermal expansion between the wood and the top coat to cause a loss of bonding and allow any air that's heated to expand and make bubbles. Or maybe it's Martians, or Gremlins, or tapeworms, or too many beans while you're buiding??? Hahaha Seriously, I think sealing the balsa well with a strong sealer, like crazy glue or epoxy, should stop the bubbling, because the sealer will be locked into the grain and pores of the raw wood. Just putting a primer onto raw wood, especially a water based primer, is just a surface application, with a weak bond to the wood.

Dieter, I use discs from aluminum cans to seal my rattle chambers. I drill a small pilot through hole first, to line everything up, and then make a 5/16" countersink, 1/16" deep, for my aluminum disc. Finally, I through drill a 1/4" through hole, using the pilot hole for centering, and make sure I've really got it cleaned out and smooth (since I'm using PVC I don't need a straw liner). I actually driill half way from each side, because the lure is already shaped and it's hard to get the holes to go through straight from one side. PVC gives me a large margin for error. Even sloppy holes work. I force one of the aluminum discs into the 5/16" countersink on one side, use brush on crazy glue with an accelerant to seat and seal the disc, and then add the sst BB's to the 1/4" hole. I seal the other end with another aluminum disc, and seal it in with brush on crazy glue and accelerant again. By hitting the glue with accelerant, I avoid having it run into the rattle chamber and gluing the sst balls ( been there, done that). I usually top the recesses off with bondo, and sand it down to the lure's contour. Like you said, I don't think the bondo is thick enough to deaden the sound of the rattle. In the past I've placed the rattle chamber between the eyes of my swimbaits (thank you Riverman) and even with the 3D eyes glued over the aluminum discs, the rattles are still plenty loud.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but almost all of these problems go away when you build with AZEK PVC trimboard. I am a carpenter, and love working with wood, but I'll never go back to wood for building lures. The waterbased paint over PVC will bubble if overheated, but I think it is from the solvent in the PVC, not from the paint, and it is minimal. The way the bubbles show themselves is almost as though the PVC has grain, because it is where the lure hasn't been sanded smooth enough, and it's always on the sides, not the top or bottom. The bubbles are easily popped with an exacto knife, and the water-based urethane I use, SC 9000, seems to bond to the Createx really well, and draw out any water that might not have dried. And the popped bubbles aren't an issue in terms of the finished paint scheme. Once I've dipped three times in the SC9000, the lures are as close to bulletproof as any bass lure needs to be. I've fished these lure for several years now, and never had a paint or topcoat failure from fishing. The only problem I've had is when I've soaked a lure overnight in water, or left it for several days on a wet deck carpet, which had cause the finish to soften. Even then, a hair dryer quickly restores the finish to hard and beautiful. I'm sure DN's original urethane would perform equally as well, if not better.

If humid air trapped in a balsa bait is a problem, try hitting the bare wood bait hard with a hair dryer before you start painting, to drive out the humid air.

Ben, Black paint brushed onto a lure with a silver base, head to tail, should make a great striper!

I bet you learned to keep your fingers out of saws, too. Hahaha

I've had the finish on commercial lures, including Lucky Craft, split down the middle of the back from the heat. Those were some kind of an applied film, like foil but not foil, and I think the film just shrank from the heat. I've left homemade lures on my boat deck in 90+ degree heat, and had no problems. I think it must be the balsa. Balsa is classified as a hardwood, even though it is soft, because it has a closed cellular structure. Maybe shaping the balsa opens some of those cells, or weakens their walls enough that heat expands the air trapped inside the cells and it escapes under the top coat, causing bubbling. Or maybe it's from UFO's.....hmmmm....

It is possible that a solvent-based primer still had some latent solvent trapped under the paint, and the heat made it epand and bubbled the top coat Be sure your primer is truly solvent free. I used to hit my lures with a hair dryer the day after I'd primed them, and then wait another hour before I began my paint scheme.

Why don't you pour up a batch and post the photos of the baits only, along with the particulars about mix, quantity, and time involved? That way you get a chance to at least show what you can do. Coming up with new ideas is fun. Developing them and bringing them to market is expensive. Protecting them, if they truly are good ideas, is next to impossible.

Glenn, I did think about that, but lexan bends so easily with heat that there has to be some kind of a way to do it with nesting metal forms and a heat gun.

I'm too lazy. If I don't wax my truck, I'm not going to wax my lures. Hahaha