mark poulson
-
Posts
14,726 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
364
Content Type
Profiles
Articles
TU Classifieds
Glossary
Website Links
Forums
Gallery
Store
Everything posted by mark poulson
-
Just buy a Banjo minnow, and copy it!
-
Great avatar dude!
-
If Rick Clunn is right, and fish get conditioned to the hydralic signature of common cranks, then any crank with a different movement in the water should work, as long as it's well made. I know, on our SoCal lakes, fish do get conditioned pretty quickly to new stuff. The scrounger was deadly for a couple of seasons, and then the fish got used to it. I would have thought new generations of fish would be "dumb", and go for the old stuff, but it seems like they learn as a group, and leave the same lures alone that were deadly only a few years ago. Having said that, cranks and blades still catch them. You just have to pick you spots. The one thing that may be different is how well the Japanese square bill cranks, and now the Strike King KVD square bills, come through cover. Getting just the right lip size, angle, and buoyancy to help them come over branches without snagging IS rocket science. I am much more aggressive with a plastic square bill than with a balsa square bill. I'm sure a lot of that is due to the "indestructibility" of plastic, but the Lucky Craft BDS 1 is still amazing.
-
Azek Pvc Cranks, Made One Day And Fished The Next
mark poulson replied to mark poulson's topic in Hard Baits
You're not kidding, the dust is really irritating. I use a dust mask whenever I'm working PVC, including hand sanding. As for the sun, UV eats plastic, eventually. It breaks down the long chain molecules that are the main plastic binding ingrediant, so you wind up with a coarse surface eventually. But the heat/melt surface that AZEK decking comes with should hold up a long time. Just don't leave the sun roof open too long! -
Thanks for the idea, Pete. I have been trying to get a blue/violet sheen on my pearl white baits. I'm going to try and mix in some transparent violet, and see what happens.
-
Whats The Hardest Most Durable Clear Coat On The Market?
mark poulson replied to CatchemCaro's topic in Hard Baits
And it's not very buoyant, although they do build boats out of it. -
Great paint scheme, and they all look alike. Well done. Those eyes really pop out at you. -
I use Mojo sinkers, so I can vary the rate of fall. I make a pilot hole with an awl, but I'm sure you can afix a wire in your mold to make the pilot hole when you pour.
-
Ben, That lure looks great. How long did it take you to make? Mark -
You have it down to a science! Those are really nicely done. -
I love your baits. -
2nd try @ crappie on my balsa bait
mark poulson commented on Stickman Baits's gallery image in Hard Baits
Very nice, both the lure and the paint job. -
I use self-adhesive 3d eyes. When I surface mount them, and then top coat over them, they really pop out and look bug eyed. I usually drill a hole with a forstner bit and recess them. Just be sure and sand around the eye holes with 180 or 220 grit paper before you paint the lure, to soften the edge of the drilled hole. Then paint, stick them in, and top coat.
-
Ben, Not having to seal the bait, or to prime it, cuts days off my building time. I know you use DN's WRTC. I think you can probably dip it, and use a hair dryer to speed up the drying so you can get several coats on in a day. I can do a dip coat an hour with the SC9000 or the EM9300, if I hit the lure a couple of times with the dryer between dips. When I took the lures down early Sat. morning to put on the hooks and split rings, I hit them one more time with my hair dryer on high, just to give them a little more "cure". It's such a pleasure to be able to decide to make a lure one day, and fish it the next. I'm going to try making some RC 2.5 lures, and I'm sure I'll have to add ballast to them to get them to swim right. There's just too much PVC. It's not as buoyant as balsa, but it's at least as buoyant as poplar, and it's so much harder, it's great. PM me you address, and I'll send you some AZEK to try. Mark -
I like it, too. If that's your first paint job, you're on you way to being an artist. -
Rofish, Kind words indeed! Like you say, if they don't catch fish, it's because the fish are too dumb to know any better! I am a very heavy handed painter. Part of it is I'm always in a hurry to get a lure done and swimming, and part of it is I'm just not that talented. So if I can make a lure that works, anyone can.
-
Azek Pvc Cranks, Made One Day And Fished The Next
mark poulson replied to mark poulson's topic in Hard Baits
I don't know if you can route AZEK, but I don't see why not. Slow, steady feed with a sharp cutter should work fine. It machines like wood, but without the grain. You need sharp tool, or it will melt slightly. I do a lot of sanding with an oscillating belt sander, and I make sure not to use too much pressure, or the PVC melts and grabs. I use a band saw to cut profiles and lip slots, a coarse 50 grit belt to rough shape, and an 80 grit belt to refine the shape. I finish shape with an 4" Makita vibrater sander with 80 and 120 grit, and finish sand by hand with 150 grit. In the past, I've use rasps and files, and I still use a file to make flats for stick on eyes, but the power tools make it go so much faster I have switched to them. I bet AZEK would work for a boat deck. I have just never tried it for anything except lure making. The County of Ventura rebuild the docks at Lake Piru with a cheaper composition decking, and it's already swelling, after less than a year. I have had no such problems with AZEK. If I were you, I'd buy a small piece and test soak it, to make sure they haven't changed the formula, or something dumb like that. I know the last batch I bought had a coarser mix than the first stuff they sold. Probably cheaper to produce like that. -
100% Borosilicate Glass Beaker With Handles For Heating Plastic
mark poulson replied to Marks Lures's topic in Soft Plastics
Mark, Did you see this thread: http://www.tackleunderground.com/community/topic/21621-silicone-cups-for-microwave-heating-tip/ I pour for me, and do a lot of hand pours. And I use a Cajun injector for my worms. Since I've started using the silicone cups, I only use my pyrex cups for hold my stir sticks and spue cutoffs. I've gotten pretty good at hand pouring with them, too. I hold the cup in my gloved left hand, pinch the cup to make a tight pour hole with my right, and pour a thin stream, no problem. The plastic stays hot a whole lot longer, and there's no drop and break danger, or exploding pyrex issues. I can refill my 3 oz. injector a couple of times before the plastic cools too much to inject. As I said, I'm just a hobby pourer, and only make stuff for myself, and some friends who beg. I don't do production, or I'd stay with the system that Frank uses. He's a genius! -
I don't see any reason why you couldn't make a POP mold that would work, open pour. If you mix your POP really well, set some center plugs in the POP, and smooth the top with something like a piece of ceramic tile by pressing it down on the mold face. Let it dry, and then use an exacto knife to cut radial veins in the POP before you oven cure it. Once the mold is cured, and sealed, you could just fill the plug and veins loosely with your plastic, press the tile down on top of the mold to thin out the over pour, and then cut the filmy excess off after the plastic hardens. The ceramic tile will help the plastic cool quickly, and the skirt will stick to the tile when you lift it off if you spray the mold with PAM before you start pouring. Time consuming, but you'd probably get pretty good at it once you'd practiced, and you could make any color skirt you wanted. I use this method with RTV 4" lizard molds from Lure Craft, and it works great.
-
I just posted (4) pics in the gallery of some cranks I made Friday afternoon, and fished yesterday. I'm posting for three reasons. First, I'm thrilled with my success, which I think I owe in large part to beginner's luck, and the fact that shallow cranks are easy to build. Second, I wanted to show how easy the AZEK-type PVC decking is to use to make lures. I made the two cranks, start to finish, on Friday afternoon, dipped them twice that night, and fished them the next day. Talk about instant gratification. Third, I wanted to address the hobbiests out there, like me, not the pros who make lures to sell. The urethane coating I use, SC9000, is an "interior" urethane, and not bullet proof. But it holds up great for cranks, and other lures, and goes on fast and easy. While I only did two dip coats on these, if I had been willing to stay up another hour, I could have done three dips. Even so, I banged into stuff with the less than 12 hour old dipped lures, and they held up fine. They do cure out harder over time, but they were plenty hard yesterday. Dick Nite has come up with the same type urethane, and I'm playing around with it, to see if it will be as fast and easy to use. If so, I'll switch. But, for now, the SC9000 works great.
-
I forgot to mention that I did a botch job on the painting.
-
Here are two PVC decking cranks, and the original in the middle. I'm posting them because I just copied the original as closely as I could, float tested them to make sure the balance was good, and fished them. They work! Beginner's luck, dumb luck, whatever you want to call it, I didn't have to add ballast to get them right. The .072X7/8" screw eyes I used for the line tie and the hook hangers, plus the plano divider bill, worked out just right. The copies don't ride as high as the original, but I was able to bounce them off some brush, just like the original. I am going to shave down the one with the longer bill. It rolls at high speeds, but the other one doesn't, it dives to 3'+, and hunts when I burn it. The AZEK decking is not as buoyant as balsa, but it's plenty bouyant for these, I guess. I didn't prime the PVC, and didn't recess the eyes, like I normally do, to save time. I got the bug to make them Friday afternoon, they only got two coats of SC9000 Friday night, and I fished them Saturday morning. The trebles and split rings are a little bigger than the originals, #4 hooks and #5 split rings, and that probably helped with the ballasting. But I'm really happy with how quick and easy it was to make them. I cut the lip slot on the band saw while they were rectangular blanks, after I'd traced the outline and the lip angle onto them. I'm still amazed at how easy making lures is with PVC. Waterproof, buoyant, no priming, strong, hard. I know that's sacrilige for a carpenter, but why did I ever try and use wood?
-
-
-
Oops. BDS 1, not RC 1.5. At my age, they all look alike.