mark poulson

Ray, I bought the ES Ripper mold from Barlow's for $32+-. It has three cavities and pours great and catches fish! https://www.barlowstackle.com/Do-It-Essentials-Ripper-Mold-35-P3773.aspx One cavity for $68, or three cavities for $32?

I add .030 (?) purple glitter to my brown powder coat, and it doesn't melt. I get High Temp glitter from Bait Junky's.

Just wait until you get older. "Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer you get to the end, the faster it goes."

Here are links to a couple of the spybaits I made, with more info on the build.:

Would seating small magnets where the wire forms lie help?

What are you going to do for a living when you grow up?

If you look at a spybait, you'll see that it has a flat bottom, and the ballast extends up past the mid line of the bait. The flat bottom provides resistance on the fall and swim, and the raised ballast provides instability, and the combination of the two makes the bait rock back and forth on the wall, and on the retrieve. I made some that work, and that's what I learned in the process.

To quote Captain Jack Sparrow, "It a matter of leverage." To me, the line tie (tow point) provides a balance point between a lipped crankbait body's movement in resistance to the water flowing over and around it, and the lip's resistance to the water striking it. The position of the line tie provides more leverage to one or the other. Achieving a balance between those two forces is what give a lipped crankbait stability. I like to think of it like a seesaw that has different sized kids on either end. They move toward or away from the fulcrum, the pivot point, until their body weights achieve a balance, so they can go up and down effortlessly, or the tail of a kite, long enough to provide stability, but short enough to still allow the kite to fly. As Bob said, a lure with a horizontal line tie would be much harder to tune, although it would allow you to move the tow point up or down more easily.

One of the things I tried when I was trying to seal my wood baits was Minwax Wood Hardener. The painters on our residential jobsites used it to harden rotten wood so they could bondo and paint it. I tried soaking my baits in Minwax Wood Hardener (http://www.minwax.com/wood-products/maintenance-repair/minwax-high-performance-wood-hardener) but it took forever for them to stop bubbling (off gassing). I think it penetrated so deeply that the solvents had a tough time getting back out. I think that was a mistake, in hindsight, and it might have worked if I'd used it differently. If I were going to try it again, I'd probably just brush it on, or dip it and let it hang. Soaking it is overkill.

What kind of prep do you need before you do the second coat?

To match he original Senko I added a cup of salt/blast media to two cups of plastisol. BPS must be close to that. Add softener because the salt will make your baits stiffer. I add one teaspoon per cup of plastic. Play around with how much softener until you get the wiggle you want.

Life does seem to catch up to all of us, sooner or later. I hope he isn't in too much pain.

Wood will move. The bigger the piece of wood, the greater the movement. For small (4" max) wood baits, I use either Rustoleum X2 Primer, or, for balsa baits, runny super glue. For larger wood baits I use a decoupage epoxy, like Etex, that will expand and contract with the wood. Wood movement was one of the reasons I switched to PVC.

I found that having the two sections fall horizontally, and at the same rate, was the key to my glide baits swimming in the slow S pattern (thank you to all the TU members who helped me figure that out). That way, there is no friction in the hinge joint, so the bait reacts to the water passing down it's sides (vortices) much more.

I always remove and replace my Iwata needle from the back. I remove it when I'm changing colors so I can wipe it clean for the next color. I only remove the nozzle assembly when I'm doing a real cleaning. Maybe that's why....???

Matt, Remember that LED lights give off UV rays. I found that out the hard way, when my UV cure resin cured inside my garage, with all the doors closed and no sunlight. When I dip now I only have the old fluorescent lights up near the 11' ceiling on, and that saves my UV cure resin. And I don't need UV light to cure my nail polish!

I think you'll probably get a better answer from the folks on the Wire Baits forum.

Hahaha. Depends on the crowd you run with, I guess. Seriously, when I dip a crank in something other than UV cured resin, I will coat the path that the belly treble swings in with clear nail polish, to prevent hook rash.

I would think so, but I've never done that. The baits I made pine were made from really white pine. That was over 10 years ago, and was pine I'd had in the garage for another 10 years at least), so I can't speak to the quality of the wood available today.

Try acetone.

I've tried everything you mentioned except the DN, because of the storage issues. I am going to try KBS Diamond coat next. It's supposed to be bulletproof, and, while it a mcu, it's not supposed to be as hard to store as the DN. I got my quart here, along with 4 oz of their thinner: https://www.kbs-coatings.com/DiamondFinish-Clear.html#pr-header-8 I bought a spray bottle of bloxygen online. I just decanted my quart into a mason jar. After I'd poured the KBS into the jar, I sprayed the bloxygen against the inside of the jar for 2 seconds per the instructions. Then I closed the jar, with a layer of clear plastic (thick baggie material) between the lid and the jar, to prevent the lid from sealing itself shut, and latched the wire lock. It's sitting on my workbench now, waiting for me to paint something. Hahaha Congratulations on your daughter! Welcome back!

Barlow's has all black 3D eyes: https://www.barlowstackle.com/Lure-Eyes-C38.aspx

Is that Cedar kiln dried?

I used to tape off most of the lip, and use my finger dipped in denatured alcohol to remove excess epoxy, and to shape the lip to bait joint. It was a pain, but it kept the lips clean.

Just be sure to make a small enough test piece that you can dip it into the 4 oz bottle. Paint up a dowel, or a pencil, something that you can dip. I've been told the stuff has fumes, so be sure to use ventilation, and be careful. I think the directions say it needs to cure for four days,or something like that. Whatever it says, follow those directions, so you'll really know how that stuff works.