Downriver Tackle

You guys hold the airbrush with your right hand? I'm a lefty and the right side usually comes out better for me.

Yep! I know exactly what you mean. My rule is that if I notice it right away, it gets repainted. If I have to look at it twice, rotate the bait, flip it upside down, to see it (by then I'm really annoyed), but it ships. LOL

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I do these like Bob, but with a short, stiff brush. http://www.downrivertackle.com/lures/plugsnouv.jpg

Hard to say. Spray it on a scrap lure or something and heat cure it as usual, then see if it scratches off very easily. If it plugs up your gun right off the bat, it's garbage. Most waterborne coatings can't take a freeze-thaw. Some are rated by thaw cycles, meaning you can freeze-thaw them several times before you destroy the emulsion.

It has to cure around 350F. I don't know of any crank that can withstand that. Maybe woods, but I'll bet they gas way too much.

If you didn't heat set it, and it's cool, I just about guarantee that is your problem. Residual solvent left in the Createx.

Sounds like a spraying problem, not the order of layering. Flo colors are transparent and will not cover darker opaque colors, so spraying the orange last won't do much. I'd try it again in a warmer situation, then try to dial in the pressure and spray technique. To practice spraying backs and bellies without trashing a bait, take a piece of plain white paper and roll it into a tube approx. the same size as the lure and practice fading it over the curve.

With the catalysts/hardeners, it's just a few companies that package them. Because of health and reaction concerns, most paint companies don't want to deal with isocyanate, the hardener for auto paints. Mix it with water and you could have a pressure explosion. Disperse enough vapors in the air, and the oxygen in your lungs could crystalize. Most companies, including my previous employer, sends a formula to a company who blends/tests/packages the catalyts. Few companies, like us, do it ourselves. Only because we have nitrogen to blanket it in. Just like Dick Nites, which I almost guarantee uses Isocyanate, it reacts very quickly with moisture in the air.

I agree and have always wondered why the "big boys" do that. The only thing I've theorized over the years is that it's all about price and preception. "Reducers", as marketed, are usually for high-end coatings like automotive paints. "Thinners" are usually marketed to lower cost general comsumer products. Mineral spirits is a great example. It's marketed on the automotive end for old single-component lacquers as a "reducer", usually under some cool sounding name. BUT, you'll see it at harware stores marketed as thinner (for enamels ), cleaner, reducer, or god knows what. To clarify a few things. "Enamel" means nothing more than a hard and glossy finish. Could be ANY type pf coating that fits the bill, with no specific definition of "hard". One again, marketing has dilluted the true definition. And lacquer means nothing more than a paint that dries by evaporation of solvents without any catalyst, hardener, etc. Once again, could be many types of coatings. Lacquers can be enamels, and enamels can be lacquers. We have several "lacquer enamels". I'll tell you what. As a coatings formulator, who payed his way through education applying the coatings from rolling rooms with latex to airbrushing and spraying cars, to painting auto interior components, marketing is my biggest enemy!!!! I try to make it easy and understandable for the average guy, from being there, and they try to jazz it up and make it a "secret" and confusing to make you think you are getting something special for the ungodly price. Unknowingly, you end up using a common material at 100x the price, and thinking you're dealing with some special process and blend that we sell to some other industry for pennies on the $ that the automotive industry pays.

My rule of thumb is to almost always fade the lighter colors over the dark. Makes for a much smoother transition. I'd lay down the brown and orange, then fade the chartreuse between them. As for the yellow. You can just barely add a little of almost any blue or green, preferably flo green, and shift the Createx flo yellow over to that greenish chartreuse. If I'm just doing enough for one or a few baits, I'd dip a tooth pick in the blue or green and stir it in. It doesn't take miuch.

HUH????? In 20 years, I've never heard that before. Reducing and thinning are the same regardless of type of paint. It's like calling soda, pop. Different name, same thing. I don't want to argue and get anyone upset again, but incorrect information doesn't make the search any easier. You are right about the retarder though. It is a blend of slow solvents, but does varies by brand. There's no specific formula for "retarder", but it usually is mostly MAK.

Should be relatively easy to find. Almost any automotive paint supply store will have it. Sometimes it's marketed as slow reducer or something of that nature. If you can't find a store, just ask your local body shop who their supplier is. If you can find PPG automotive paints somewhere, they'll have it. We have a chain in this area called "Painters Supply Store" that supplies all the area body shops and smaller industrial places. It's worth the search. It's a great solvent to cure blushing and gives you a like-glass finish. About the same health concerns as lacquer thinner.

Great idea!!! The most we can pull with our expensive set-ups is 30", so if you can do it by hand, and safely, that seems like the way to go.

Very, very familiar with using vaccuum pumps to evacuate flammables. We do it all the time at work. We have hermetically sealed mtotrs on the pumps, which eliminates ignition from the pump itself, but the issue for us is it coming out the exhaust. Ours vents through something that looks like a muffler and gets it away from the body of the pump. Even with that, we have to keep it in a vented fume hood, so it doesn't ignite from a nearby source, especially with acetone!!! I'd say that if your pump is venting within the body of the pump, and not venting through a sealed port, you're probably playing with fire, literally. If you do have a sealed port, and big nads, I'd try to to vent it away from the unit in a running spray booth.

Brought the subject up to our X-treme chemical guru today. He was familiar with both types of materials. His opinion was that it would be a waste of money to use EEP. I was wrong. It has nothing chemically similar to proprionate besides the fact that both are reacted with proprionic acid. You'll see no viscosity benefit. It goes for about $25/gal in pails for us(probably $50-75 at retail, if available), so you can accomplish the same thing with more readily available and cheaper solvents.

That can be easily cured with different solvents. Because it's blushing, I assume you're using acetone. Acetone is partially water soluoble, so it just loves gathering moisture out of the air. The definite cure is to add a solvent that evaporates slower than water, like MAK, Methyl Amyl Ketone @ 10:1 acetone:MAK, which should be available at most any auto paint supply store. Or you could try adding a slow evaporating automotive reducer at the same ratio, maybe more reducer. Lastly, you could try toluene @ 4:1 acetone:toluene. One of those will cure your problem for sure.

No wisecrack necessary to my reply. Your vague response would leave many to take it as I did. My apologies. Yours accepted too. It would probably work well as a blend with acetone. It would take forever to dry by itself. I'd start around 10:1 acetone to EEP. Another benefit would be that being similar in chemical structure, you'd probably get a thinner material with less solvent.

Here's a fresh can of worms for you. Using the proprionate solvent to dissolve solid proprionate in. LOL

Sorry for getting out of hand and hijacking the thread, but it pisses me off to no extent when someone just spews out absolute bull like it's fact. I don't want to come off as some chemical know-it-all, but I knew it was an epoxy, and also don't want to see someone chasing these proprionate and butyrate solvents down, thinking they're sealing their baits, only to find out that it all evaporated and they're left with the wood just like it was before they started and wasted all that time and money. We've all wasted time and money in search of the elusive perfect lure coating. Keeping the waste to a minumum is one of the reasons we're all here. Of the thousands of coating projects I've done over the years, finding the perfect lure coating(s) for all types has proven to be the most difficult project ever. 7 years and still learning and working on it. That's why I'm here picking your brains.

My whole business is repaints. Before I get into my process, I'll clear up an issue that will ultimately be brought up. Weight. I did a HUGE study on repaints for my more anal customers and weight for suspending and/or floating baits. What we found was that almost ANY factory bait can vary by up to 50%, most in the 10-25% range. Repainting only increased the weight by a 12% average using my system, with ZERO complaints to date. Unless you know the average weight of a given lure, stripping it to bare wood is pointless. You may be making it too light and not even know it. Generally, you'l see a bigger difference in weight by changing hook types. My system is to scuff the entire bait with 220. Prime with AutoAir white basecoat sealer. Hit it with AutoAir colors. Then seal it up with a quality 100% solids epoxy clear.

I think you have POLYMER and EPOXY mixed up. You keep relying on your distributors, and I'll rely on my college education and almost 2 decades of formulating coatings.

One thing to watch out for with any kind of paper cup is the wax coating on them. Almost all paper cups intended for liquids are impregnated with wax to keep the liquid from soaking through. If you use any solvent thinned coating in it, the wax will instantly melt and carry over into your paint. It can cause big problems with recoating, such as fisheyes and areas that won't coat correctly. Even if you use non-solvent based paints in them, you still have to watch out for scratching off the wax and making little specks on your clear. Take a dixie cup and scratch it with a toothpick and see what I mean. I use glass shot glasses for small mixes. Stainless cups I found at a garage sale for larger mixes. IMHO, urethane grade lacquer thinner is the only way to go.

Man, you are soo screwed up. That is not what "epoxy" means. Look up the chemical definition. By yours, automotive urethanes would be epoxies. While your at it, look up the definition and types of esters. IBIB is NOT a solid. It is a solvent. It evaporates and it's gone. Same old wood you started with. The proprionate or butyrates you need are solid materials, again. http://www.eastman.com/NR/rdonlyres/B42E4E67-CEFB-4C0D-97F0-800AA759D733/0/M270.pdf http://www.eastman.com/ProductCatSq/ProductHome.asp?Product=940