Downriver Tackle

That link is dead Haz

Holy #$^&$!!! That IS one bad airbrush!!! It made it today and I just got done playing around with it. VERY impressed! Just did a 50/50 mix of water and AutoAir black and was laying down needle fine lines with ease. Beautiful, fine fades also. Taking into account the price, it was well worth the wait!! Looks like the Passches may see retirement soon!

Well,good news!!! Clint e-mailed me today, gave me a tracking number, and it is en route. He sincerely apologized, explained the issue, and gave me a discount. I guess it all works out. I kinda feel bad, but geez, it all could be avoided with a little communication. I'm an internet entrepreneur myself, and even I, like most people, are a bit leery of doing business for the first time with a smaller outfit. And when something like that happens, it can get a little worrisome! Now to put that airbrush to use here shortly. Hope it arrives today!

I did call again today hours before I posted. Left a voicemail and still waiting for a reply. I've been trying to get a reponse for two weeks now! At this point, I'm just going to stop payment and cancel the order. Bummer. Looked like a great deal.

Anyone else have problems ordering a PS900 from them, NBI Marketing/Airbrushes.com? I hate posting stuff like this, but it's to that point. I tried to order one in early February, but when I went to pay, their site certificate was revoked. After a very creditable member contacted him and reassured me there wasn't an issue, I ordered one on February 10. After paying with Paypal, I never received a notice of the sale, and nothing came out of my account. I contacted them and after a few days, someone got back to me and sent a Paypal request for payment days after that stating that "as soon as payment is made we can get your order out the door." . I paid right away and the payment cleared almost two weeks ago and I never received the airbrush yet. I call the number listed and nobody answers. I e-mail and nobody replies.

I borrowed an iron, did the cure/wash test, and I rest my case. Partially cured, not fully cured. I blasted the 175F side directly with a 1500W hairdryer for at least 10 minutes. Popped the breaker twice! Unless you're popping the breaker, your lures aren't even getting that hot.

They'll still yellow, just at a slower rate. No clear stops all UV rays, that's why there's exterior and interior grade pigments. Some rays always get through. Acrylics and automotive urethanes(not household urethanes) offer the best UV pretection. Both have a natural resistance, even without additives.

Dean, Dean, Dean. I tried to be nice. Not anymore. I think the only mean spiritedness comes from you. You just can't take any statements contrary at all, can you? You get this condescending attitude every time. None of us know all about this, not me, not even you! I don't give a rats rear what you think a cure is. A full cure is when the coating reaches the properties it was formulated to reach, nothing else, no matter what. What you are experiencing is probably an adequate cure for what we do, like I noted in my first post! I will remain ademant till the end that YOUR baits are not fully cured as the formulator intended the coating to be with that process. I can't speak for the heat gun guys, but the top temp I got with my 1500W dryer in a sealed box, was 175F and at that temp, most plastics will warp, besides Lexan. At 1100F the lure would catch fire! One thing to remember also is that DN has pretty weak solvents in it. Try your process with a lacquer and the results may not be pretty. You can spray the harshest, nastiest solvent based clear on Auto Air, and it won't wrinkle after it's been cured at 125F. That's all I tried to point out in the beginning, before you got your attitude, is that at 125F I KNOW FOR SURE my baits are fully cured. You're just guessing!

My apologies Dean. I didn't intend anything mean-spirited with the old bugger comment. I call several local custom painting friends old buggers when we debate techniques. Mainly when I rip on them for still selling nice custom jobs for $1.25/lure. I even call my dad an old bugger. Probably a little too loose with it here, I guess. I'll leave our debate with the fact that we consider a "full cure" two different things. Hey, if it works, it works. Still a curing issue to me, but between layers............ Bob, you reminded me of another observation (I sure hope this one doesn't get me into trouble LOL) between Createx and Auto Air. I made the same observation as you with the epoxy just laying on top of the Createx with no penetration into it. You will get penetration with Auto Air, even with epoxy. Auto Air was designed for cars and to act basically as a sponge and let the automotive clears soak into it and get the properties of the clear, and awesome intercoat adhesion. The epoxy doesn't quite get through to the bait, but does keep everything together, rock solid. Nobody take me wrong, epoxy on Createx held up great, but if I did have a chunk of clear come off from a muskie or whatever, usually just the clear came off. Most of the time with Auto Air, if something does manage to get through the clear, the paint comes off down to the primer or the lure itself. And occurance of that with Auto Air is much less. Not to ramble or get too far off, but to explain why clears can still penetrate a cross-linked coating. If they're packed with fillers, usually a good shot of talc, it acts as a sponge. That's another reason why primers are flat and if you spray them with water you can see it stay wet for a while. Gloss paints, the water just beads and runs off. Same with putting another coating over it. If anyone noticed, Most Auto Air is much flatter than Createx.

Not familiar with the lure, but MEK, methyl ethyl ketone will put a whoopin on acetone as a stripper. Best stuff for the job besides methylene chloride strippers. But, if there's plastic involved, don't even bother. It will eat the plastic instantly.

As for Dean's question, I doubt anyone is getting a "full" cure. Obviously it's getting hot enough to start some crosslinking and not causing problems with what we do, but I noticed the lack of water resistance pretty early on when I started with Createx. My customers did also. I think we're looking at properties from different views though. I never really had a problem with applying clears over Createx, though I did have to heat it longer than Auto Air to get solvent resistance. Like I noted below, the difference I saw was after the bait was painted and had damage to the clear down to the Createx. After each use, you could see the water penetrating further and further under the clear, throuh the Createx, until chunks of clear started pulling away. One factor too is use. I, and most of my pro walleye customers, troll for walleye and a successful bait may see 6-8 hours of constant immersion while trolling. Much less exposure than most bass baits. I don't recall the issue with my casting cranks. Even though, if we're trying to put a lifetime product in the customers hands, we need to account for apllications like that to make them "bullet-proof", or at least as close to as we can. I'd say a sure test, if anyone wants to try is: Take one side of a t-shirt and paint it with Createx, then cure it with an iron as they recommend. Then paint the other side, but cure it just like you do your baits. Then!, wash that bad boy and see which side has paint left. I'm willing to bet that the "lure-cured" side is bare, or missing lots of paint after a wash, and the iron-cured side will be perfectly fine. I'd be really interested to see the results. If I had an iron, I'd try it myself. LOL Clamboni, you're kind of right, but it all depends on the paint. Longer time/lower temp doesn't always work. Crosslinking can be designed to occur at different temps in the various paint binders. My guess is that Createx actually fully crosslinks somewhere around 200F, but they say 325F as overkill to ensure that it is cured completely. Common practice if you're formulating the paint for a material that can handle the temps. If it was anywhere near 300F, even prolonged heat wouldn't do much. You'd have to cure for hours for even minimal resistance properties. If you start getting in the ballpark of the crosslinking temp, which we do with lures and hairdryers, you will start to see some resistance properties develop, but even if you let it cure like that for hours, it will never fully cure, as designed to. Another test. Take your cured Createx lure and run it under HOT water, rub your finger across it, and see how quickly that paint comes off! Thanks Mark! Some people here seem to get bent about my "help" and take it personally because what I know about coatings flies in the face of what they've done for years. Mostly those old buggers. LOL But, I'm not here to knock anyones techniques, just to help and point out issues before they arrise. Some of the things I may warn against may not be seen by most people, but if I didn't see it myself, or the potential of it happening wasn't there, I wouldn't even mention it. Just like you guys, I'm only trying to build the perfect paint system and lure.

I agree Dean, that's why I choose Auto Air over regular Createx. Regular Createx has to be cured at 325F to cure properly or it will wash off easily with water. Auto Air is only 125F. You'll never get a bait to 325F before you gas the wood and bubble the paint, or melt the plastic. Biggest difference in performance I've seen is that if you do get a gouge that penetrates the clear, Createx will soften and delaminate the whole lure eventually. I don't see that with Auto Air. Sorry for going off topic again, kinda, but I thought it was within reason. Sorry.

To elaborate on your question.... (was on my way out to work this morning)................ ... it doesn't necessarily help it "get out of the gun". That's the easy part. Getting the paint on the surface with the greatest amount of paint solids and still level out is the hard part. Follow me here. When you use acetone, I'm sure you know, it evaporates FAST! So.... as it's traveling through the air to the bait, it's evaporating acetone like crazy and the clear is getting thicker as it does. Problem is that you have to have enough acetone left when it hits the bait for the clear to be liquid and flow. You can accomplish the same thing with less solvent by using a slower drying solvent with the acetone, so the slow solvent keeps the clear "wet" until it makes it to the bait and will flow properly. Acetone isn't the ideal reducer for most paints. Let's say you reduce a clear 1:1 with acetone and another batch with 1:1 toluene or a ketone. Generally, the acetone reduced one will be thicker in viscosity, so it takes more solvent to make the clear sprayable and less actual coating gets on the lure. The only time we recommend acetone as a reducer for spraying is if the customer purposely wants to get a very thin film of paint on a part. One thing to remember though. Every type of paint has it's own spraying characteristics. Vinyls and acrylic lacquers usually have to be reduced to less than 20% solids or they won't spray, no matter what you use. Some urethanes, epoxies, and 2-component acrylics can be sprayed at over 50% solids. I've formulated clears that sprayed effortlessly and looked like glass at 65% solids. That's why you should never limit yourself to one fix-all solution for all the clears mentioned around here. I'm telling ya. If flammables weren't so expensive to ship, I could make a fortune and a bunch of happy bait painters here!

I should have typed right solvent and clear. Different types of coatings are sprayable at different solids level. I've never used DN before, but I'll take your word for it. It must be reduced a bit right at the factory. I used a high solids automotive clear, similar to PPG's Deltron, did two coats of clear usually, and got build about the same as epoxy. I'd spray one coat, let it flash while I painted the rest of the batch, then came around again for a second coat. Air dry overnight, then heat cure for about 20 minutes then next day, then ship. Once I started brushing epoxy though, I'll never go back to spraying or anything that needs multiple coats, besides for muskie lures.

Here's my set-up for setting AutoAir. Pretty much the same as Createx. 1500W hair dryer. I set each layer of primer and color for about 10 minutes on the medium setting. When all the colors and eyes are done, I blast the lures on high for another 5-10 minutes to seal everything up completely. You do have to be careful though. I've warped a few plastic lures and thin bills by leaving them in for a bit too long.

Same experience here. A touch-up gun is way too big! I used to clear all my baits with a sprayed automotive urethane before I switched to epoxy. I used a Passche VL with #3 or 5 tip and needle, depending on bait size. Even shot flakes in the clear very nicely. One major factor is the solvent you thin with though. To get the the right performance out of a small airbrush, you need a slower drying thinner, or you'll have to thin the paint to nothing and do multiple coats, like with acetone. With the right thinner, you can get results close to brushed epoxy with one of two coats.

Just sitting back thinking of ideas. What about taking clear powder paint and puting it in an eye mold? If the mold can take the heat, of course. I'll bet if you hit those eyes with heat right away Haz, you'd cure that bubble problem.

Unless you get a micron or hepa filter, you will always get some paint dust dispersed through the working area. If you do use one, then you'll probably only get a few baits before you have to change that $10-20 filter. I don't give a hoot what anyone here says about fume concentration and ventilation. I've worked in paint and chemical factories my whole life and have seen how certified PERFECT systems ON PAPER still were able to have flash fires. Too many variables to go non-explosion-proof! Yeah, yeah, people cite the concentrations for acetone or whatever, but when you get solid particulate into the mix, it's a whole different story. Aluminum flake, depending on the particle size, can flash well below the threshold for many solvents. When you've seen the almighty black cloud moving toward you from a flash fire, you'll get a bit more respect! Been there, done that, and don't want to do it again!!! Go either with a belt-driven system, or an enclosed system with explosion-proof motors only if you're spraying flammables. Plenty of people will rip on me for this post with thier claim of no problems, and many will go their whole life without an issue, but the chance still remains. I choose not to play with fire and my families lives.

A durable chrome finish is impossible to find. All "chrome" paint finishes are made with what's called leafing aluminum pigment. It's small flakes of aluminum coated with stearic acid to make them "leaf" and orient side by side to give the appearance of a continuous film. The problem is that the flakes are completely coated with stearic acid that acts as a lubricant. If you've ever ran your nail across one of those finishes, you'll notice a waxy substance on top. That's the stearic acid. If apply a clear on top, almost any one will eat the stearic acid off and then the flake edges start to pull apart, giving you a dull grey color. There are a few clear systems that will cover the leafing aluminum without disrupting the acid, but then the clear is just resting on the surface of the waxy acid, and you really don't have any adhesion. Slightest blemish in the clear and it will all delaminate in no time. You're best off with foil or I use Autoair coarse aluminum base as a descent chrome reproduction.

Autoair Metallic Silver is exactly what you need. Color #4332

You're right on the money Haz. I tried a variety of pearl whites over Autoair silvers, black, and white Basecoat Sealer. Contrary to what I thought before I started, the flat/matte white Basecoat sealer gave the best look, hands-down.

No need for a turner. It will just increase the cure time a bit, but won't affect how it sets up much at all. By the time it normally takes for the acetone to get out as usually, about half the MAK will be gone. So if you think about a 95% proprionate : 5% solvent mix, it's going to be a solid. I can't guarantee it, but it MIGHT actually cure faster! A huge no-no in coatings is to use a single solvent. It causes a number of issues, including blushing. As far as curing, one solvent usually"case-hardens" the coating on the surface and chokes off the evaporation of the solvent underneath. Having multiple solvents in there helps keep the surface open and lets everything evaporate quicker.

Here's the Eastman/DuPont brand and a good read about it curing blushing and dry spray. I'm tellin ya, this stuff is liquid gold for tackle makers! I use it in almost every solvent-based formulation I do for a reason. http://www.eastman.com/NR/rdonlyres/DECB358A-07BD-47B7-9C48-9D03CB660712/0/TT98.pdf

You can avoid the hassle of the jar or dehumidifier just by using a different solvent with the acetone. I checked and got you guys a PPG code for the MAK solvent. It's PPG solvent Q70. Try that at 10:1 acetone to Q70, and you should be all set!

So true. I've received some weird looks at Jo-Ann Fabrics. LOL