mark poulson

You're hooked now! I think Vman's right. Your lower lip is large enough to act like a diving lip on a faster retrieve. One of my favorite, most productive poppers has a similar face, but with a very small lower lip, and a large, angled flat upper face. Bloops really loud on a pop/pause/pop retrieve, and doesn't dive on a faster retrieve.

Remember that the original green pumpkin was a mistake, when watermelon and pumpkin were mixed together. Apple Barrel mossy green, with dark brown added drop by drop, will get you close.

philB, Do you think, in a cold weather situation, heating the lure blank before you coat it with Etex would help?

68KingFisher, That sounds like an interesting method. I'll give it a try. Pete, You know I'm always "ascared" to try anything the Rookie recommends, but I'll give this one a go, too. Thanks for both of the tips.

I've had success spraying a Krylon rattlecan clear coat before I Etex, to kind of even out the surface, and cover any oils or dirt.

+1 Well done!

That's clever, and cheap!

68KingFisher, Do you mean the old Willie Nelson casting method, from "Gone Fishing"? "Dip, and flick". Seriously, thanks for the nozzle info. It's a luxury having someone like you on this site who is so knowledgeable.

Pete, That makes sense. I'd never thought about the vortices involved (that's for you, Dave), or the low pressure/vacuum that the moving air and paint would generate. Doh!!! How do you get the tip to spatter when you want it to, instead of when it wants to? Frank, The rag is a good idea. I've been pinching it with my latex gloved fingers, and twisting until it backflushes. The rag sounds much easier.

Some brushes, especially the knock offs, come with a nozzle that's cut with four triangular cuts. What do the cuts do, other than making back flushing more difficult? P.S I can spell, but, obviously, I can't type. Nozzle, nozzle, nozzle........

OMG, he's alive!! Nice to hear from you, Nathan. Try the SC 9000.

Thanks for the tip! Too smart! I have a ton of old cover plates. I'll screw one to the piece of plywood where I have my scaling net mounted, and use it to play with colors.

PP, Don't give up. Jointed baits are a bear. If you can't take them apart, put blue tape into the joints, and hand brush them with the urethane. I have never tried DN, but I know this will work with SC9000, which is another, one part, waterborne urethane.

I use acetone. I take the nozzle assembly off, and soak it for five minutes in some acetone (use a glass container to hold it, because it well melt plastic) I take the needle out, and wipe it down with an acetone rag. I will soak the brush head, including where the trigger is mounted, in acetone, if the trigger seems sticky. I also disassemble the whole brush, and clean it with acetone, and a soft brush, if it is really sticky. Then I reassemble the brush, run a bowl full of acetone through it, back flushing and spraying, to get all the old paint out. After I run acetone through the brush, I run water through it, to get the acetone out.

When I was still using epoxy, I'd coat the insides of the joint sections with D2T first, lapping it onto the face about 1/4" for a good bond, and let it set up. As long as I didn't put it on too thick, it didn't sag. Then I'd assemble the lure, put it on the drying wheel, and coat the faces with Nu Lustre 55. One coat of D2T in the joints is plenty of protection, and two coats of Nu Lustre 55 or Etex on the faces is plenty there.

Flotrol sounds great. Years ago I used something called Penetrol to help oil based paints penetrate old wood and bond better, even when there was some old paint left on it. But I have a couple of questions. Does Flotrol affect how quickly the paint dries when you hit it with hair dryer? Does it thin the paint enough that you need additional coats? I was just wondering if it makes the painted surface more delicate, as in the paint moving around from the hair dryer's blown air. I try and keep my paint coats thin enough that they won't move under the air flow, and I set the dryer on low first, until the moisture flashs off, before I set it up on high and really heat set the paint.

I haven't had any peeling experiences with the SC 9000. I use it over Createx and Wildlife water based paints, and also over rattle can paints, like spray on Krylon Glitter. But I've never immersed one of my lures in water for any length of time. I've fished them all day, and never had a problem. I used to have problems when I used epoxy over wood lures. Water always seemed to find it's way in, eventually, and start the top coat and paint scheme lifting. I never had that problem with plastic bait repaints, either. I'm wondering if the issue is water penetration. I have only used SC 9000 on one wooden bait, a one piece glider, made from Paulowinia (thanks Gene) that I soaked in Minwax Wood Hardener first, before I primed it. I wet sanded the primer, after each of the two coats I gave it. So far, no problems, even after a few stripers. But I wouldn't use wood if I were making musky lures. It's too soft, no matter what I've tried to make it harder. I really think PVC is the key, because it's totally water proof, so the performance of the top coat isn't critical in terms of keeping water out. I have to share a funny story. Talk about making things more complicated than they need to be...... Last winter, when we arrived at the lake I wanted to fish, it was blown out, and the lifeguards wouldn't let us launch our boat. So my buddy and I walked the dam, throwing swimbaits. He was throwing one of the first surface gliders I had ever made, which was four years old. It was made out of old douglas fir, salvaged from a jobsite, and painted and sealed totally with rattle can paints, over a Minwax Polyacrylic sealer. He hung the lure on a buoy rope on a long cast, and had to break it off. It was frustrating, seeing it floating there on the rope, and not being able to go get it. The next week we went back to the lake, launched, and, with the lifeguard's permission, went into the buoyed area looking for the lure. We found it, cut the trebles to get it free, and saved it. When we checked it out later that day, the finish was perfect, even after being in the lake a week. It's back in service. So old, oil-based paints are really great, too. I have been making some 4" four piece swimbaits and one piece walking baits out of PVC, and painting them totally with rattle cans. I love that I can do the priming and painting completely in one day, and fish it the next day if I want to. I've found that, if I let the white primer dry for two hours, I can spray on the simple, silver or white base coat, and then, within 15 minutes, spray on a shoulder and back layer, and it bonds into the base coat, and dries hard.I originally left the top coat off because I didn't want to lose the shiny silver finish from the spray on aluminum paint. I actually did a crackle finish by mistake, when I used gloss white for the basecoat, and then sprayed a light black on the back and shoulders almost immediately. The black crackled, exposing the white, but it still dried hard. Dumb luck. For someone like me, who likes immediate gratification, it's ideal. And I can test new lures and basic paint schemes so much faster, and then duplicate them with a more complicated paint scheme, covered by SC 9000, for production.

Try Sharpies.