mark poulson

I started building lures when I broke a buddy's lure, and made him a replacement. The rest, as they say, is history. P.S. Thanks to Vodkaman, my winds of inspiration are now filled with vortices!

That brings back memories! In the early '60s, my friend's father helped us make a surfboard. He read up on fiberglass resin, and saw that the less hardner you used, the stronger the eventual fiberglass would be, so he added just the bare minimum. He believed in being careful, so he kept adding resin to get it "perfect". What was supposed to be a light red surfboard wound up being a scary red, with big drips and runs, and it took 2 weeks to harden! He had put the resin on so thick the board weighed a ton, too. We called it the Tank. But it was strong. It came off the car rack on the road once, and you couldn't even see where it had hit the pavement!

Blazt, I have a feeling you may be missing a step in your cleaning process that makes it much faster, and cuts down on the amount of acetone, or any cleaning solution, that's needed. I haven't yet tried the Future, but this is how I clean my brushes. Between colors, I backflush and clean with a water and dishwashing liquid mixture, but, when I'm done with my painting session, here's my final cleaning routine. I wear a nitrile glove on my left hand when I paint, and when I clean my brush, since I hole my crankbaits in my hand a lot of the time to paint them, and I'm right handed. I back flush with acetone by covering the nozzle tip with my left index finger, and then shooting the acetone through at full air pressure, full paint. That forces the solvent back up through the cup, or back into the bottle on my siphon brush, and does a great job cleaning out the tiny air holes in the nozzle. It doesn't take a lot of acetone to clean out all the paint. I use a small fine bristle brush, dipped in the acetone, to clean out the nozzle tip, where dried paint accumulates as I paint. I then remove the needle, wipe off any paint and solvent, and then push it back and forth in the hole to get any remaining paint out, and shoot some more acetone through the brush to get any last paint out. Then I put my water/detergent mix into the bowl, backflush and shoot some of it through the brush to remove the remaining acetone and to lube the needle, and it's set for the next time I want to paint. I'll probably use acetone after each Future-thinned paint, because BobP said he noticed the Future sets up strong in the needle hole, and I don't want to have to use pliers to get it moving again. Silly me.

I just love it when you talk dirty! Thanks for sharing your actual knowledge with the rest of us.

Dave just covered epoxy top coat completely, and perfectly, as usual. I used to allow 2 grams+- for epoxy when I used it on my wood swim baits. If you are using a urethane, DN-type top coat, brushing will give you a slightly heavier coating, but the actual top coat weighs so little I don't think it matters, except with suspending lures. And water temps. affect suspenders so much, it's not possible to have a bait that suspends 100% of the time, so I would just err on the slightly lighter side. You can always add a little mor ballast with suspend dots. I dip my plastic and PVC baits three times in urethane, and the effect on the buoyancy and action of the baits is negligible.

Flashabou is the way to go. It's in the fly fishing section of tackle stores. I don't know how microwave safe it is, but it will withstand the temps. that we need to melt plastic.

It pays to do chores! I was out in the laundry room, doing a load of laundry, and looked up on the shelf above the washer. There was half a bottle of Future floor polish sitting there. Whoopee!!! I actually don't have a problem shooting Createx pearls unthinned, but my Folk Art metalics are very thick, so I'm going to try the Future out on one of them.

You Dah Man!!!!! Thanks for taking one for the team. I can't wait to hear your report. Fingers crossed.