68KingFisher

After dinner I decided to go back and get the rest....Just couldn't stand the thought of good material gettin away from me....lol......I ended up with probably 50 or so pieces in the 16" to 24" range.....if this is the same stuff as what ya'll are using then i'm set for awhile.....Man that stuff sure is heavy for something thats suppose to float...lol....but it seems to carve easily with a knife....wish I could figure out whats wrong with my dremel so I could do a little shaping....guess its time for a new one. While i was dumpster diving, I found a couple of pieces of red cedar one by fours so I snagged those also.....You guys have been talking about free sources of wood....neighborhood construction sites might be just the ticket....lol

I was visiting with a neighbor a block down the road who's doing alot of the after tornado remoldeling like the rest of us, and I noticed they were putting a new deck on his front porch....when I looked closer I realized they were using the AZEK stuff you guys are always talking about.....So I said "Hey....Ya'll got any scraps"?.....The builder say's "Nutin very big, but check the dumpster out by the street".....So I stuck my head over the top of the dumpster to find a butt load of scraps....so I start grabbing myself an big stack only to realize that "Dang...this stuff is heavy"....LOL.....I told them i'd get my wellbarrow and come back down tommorrow and get some more. What I got was all brown in color....measures about a bit over 1" thick and about 5.5" wide....most of the scraps were 16-18" long.......Was this a good find??.....Should I scavange as much as I can?

In my personal opinion I think a MAC valve is just a marketing gimmick, but a few guys swear by them although I can't imagine why......I purchased an add on MAC valve for my Paasche VL close to 20 yrs ago, and I stopped using it after I found that I just didn't need it......DSV, the MAC valve is located near the head assembly....usually where a siphon feed bottle would hang on the bottom of the airbrush....its just a find tuning air valve that allows you to tweak your air pressure at the airbrush while in use.....but I can do that at the regulator that hangs on my mobile work station.....the MAC valve is not anything i'd pay extra for, thats for sure. The cutout section on the handles that your referring too is to allow you access to the needle chuck assembly....you can pull the needle much farther back by hand this way then what the trigger will allow.....the reason behind this feature is that it allows you to blow a clog out of the tip....blast an extra amount of paint....really fog the paint on. Years ago we cut the plastic handles on our VL's to the accomplish the same thing....although most guys just removed the handles and paint without them....personally I like the added weight of the handle and how it feels opposed to using the airbrush without the handle....besides...if you drop your airbrush its either gonna land on the tip...or the tail end....Murphy's law I think:wink:.....and if your not using a handle then you'll drive the needle thru the tip and ruin it....I've done that twice so I keep my handles on....lol. The revolution is labeled as having a "Fixed head and needle assembly".....I dunno what that means since i've never used one....I looked at the exploded parts view on Dixies website and I can't tell much difference.....Mabye BobP can help in that area?

Dixieart.com shows the Revolution with bottle assy and hose for $83.95....they list the Eclipse at $99.95 for same setup with bottle assy and 10ft hose.

I think after re-reading your explaination(several times)....lol....i've got a pretty good visual on what your saying and I gotta admit I hadn't really thought about just spraying scales on one side at a time....i'd just assumed everyone draped their material over the bait and clamped it from below....your way actually sounds alot simpler....and your use of push pins to hold the material in place is sure worth a try....thanks.

That would make you a decent brush, but for the about the same money i'd go with the Iwata Eclipse series rather then the Revolution....but thats just me....guess i'm partial to the Eclipse....its been one of the best airbrushes i've ever owned.

Your compressor will work fine.....but I too would suggest you pass on the Aztec and go with a better airbrush....preferrably one not built outta plastic.

I did my first repaint tonight on a couple of old store bought crankbaits, and I too had mixed results with my masking material.....but mine wasn't with the material size or pattern, but with trying to wrap it and hold it in place.....I found this task to be quite difficult actually so i'm hoping there might be some trick to it?? I might have been using too large a piece of material also....I dunno...it seemed I had more material bunching up under the bait then nessasary and trying to clamp all the extra material was a pain. The only clamps I had laying around were some wooden clothes pins....the spring loaded kind....they worked ok, but i'm gonna look for something better.....I couldn't seem to get the material to pull up tight to the lure in some areas so I was worried about blowing paint under the material and ruining the pattern.....I ended up applying the paint so lightly that didn't happen...but the scale pattern didn't show up very well either....well, it shows, but not not as much as I intended.

Well said Rookie....well said. For the record I started using an airbrush with canned air............didn't take but a few minutes to realize that was a mistake so I aquired a used 1/8hp unit.....that carried me a few months before I decided it wouldn't cut the mustard either.....next unit was a used Dayton on a 2gal tank....mated it with a 20 gal tank I ran across at a garage sale for dirt cheap, so I ended up with 22 gals.....the compressor ran longer then it should but as Rookie pointed out once it shut off your good to go for awhile....noise free....that unit served me well for close to 15yrs.....then my lovely wife gave me the compressor of my dreams for my birthday......6.5hp, 220v, 65gal upright tank.........I've been walkin in tall cotton ever since.....This unit will outlive me for sure....its not near as loud as you might think, and I can paint for half a day before it kicks back on.....the other great part for me, is I can use pneumatic airtools now, so I purchased a full set of impacts and air ratchets and what not to use in the garage when i'm tinkering with my old jalopy's and motorcycles.....all the kids in the neighborhood know where to come when they need air in their bicycle tires too....lol.

Although I feel a bit gun shy on this subject at the moment, I would like to say your probably 100% correct.....there are most likely thousands of folks across the globe that use those little compressors on a regular basis and they work quite well for their needs.....Lord knows they've been selling that style unit for alot of years......And i'd also bet there are as equally many folks that purchased them, only to realize weeks later that those little units would not work to their expectations and then they wish they had spent their money on something bigger in the first place. I suppose those are the folks I try to help by making the recommendations that I do in hopes it will keep them from possibly making a wrong purchase......I do have to remember as I make these comments that i'm now on a tackle making site and not an airbrushing site.....I've become so accustom to giving advice to newbie airbrushers in general that i've failed to realize the needs of a hobbiest lure painter may not be near as demanding as many other areas that utilize the airbrush....like paintin tee shirts or helmets or auto's or ??...which seems to be what most new airbrushers are looking to paint these days......So forgive me if i've insulted anyone on their choice of compressors or airbrush equipment....That was never my intent.....I still stand by what I said and I would never recommend one of those mini compressors to anyone, but it doesn't mean they might not work for you......Same goes for all the off brand airbrushes that are available today.....they may work great for you, but I wouldn't recommend one. What works for one guy won't work for another.....We were just talkin on another forum about how one guy can catch all his fish on something like a spinnerbait and the next guy say's he's never been able to catch a fish on one, and they fish the same areas....so go figure....lol.

Glad I wasn't the only one....lol:)

The longer I hang around this website, the more increasing need I see for a drillpress and a lathe....

John, have you tried stirring those paints to make sure all the pigments haven't seperated and settled to the bottom of the jar or something?....I've seen old Createx do some weird stuff, especially if it ever got frozen or really hot at some point.

Well, i've poured Createx into a pie pan and let it thicken up thru evaporation before....I used to do that with AquaFlow white alot cause it was way to thin.....occasionally i'll use Flotrol paint conditioner as modifier to help reduce the opacity of acrylics or to aid in the flow and open time during hot weather....its fairly thick on its own so it might be worth tryin....Ace hardware sells the stuff and a quart isn't too expensive. On the other hand if you've got a bottle of Createx thats too watery thin, then i'd be wondering if you got a bad batch or something.....it should be good to spray right outta the bottle without having to modify it.....most of my Createx is quite old so being too thin is normally never a problem...lol...its usually the other way round and way too thick.

Couple of things about pearls.....first off they settle in the jar so make sure you stir and/or shake the livin daylights out of a bottle of Createx before you use it....if your using solvent paints and mixing powered pearls with intercoat clear then you'll find you need to keep it well stirred cause the pearls will settle to the bottom alot faster then the waterbased stuff....also remember, that if your using a gravity feed airbrush, the pearl particles will try to settle to the bottom of the cup so an occasional backflush of air or a quick stir might be nessasary to keep things mixed up...(Caution---be careful with backflushing or you'll find you and your work area covered in the paint that used to be in the cup...lol)......I normally stir mine every few minutes with a popcicle stick while its in the airbrush cup just to keep the pearls in good suspension, followed by a slight backflush of air. Secondly, when it comes to spraying pearls...specially white, and especially when spraying light colored pearls over light colored base colors.....You spray a couple of coats, but you don't really see any results, so you think you need to keep spraying till you do......when the fact is you sprayed your 2-3 coats and its there....you just won't be able to see the effect till its clearcoated...Don't keep sprayin.....by the time you see results you've usually put on way to much paint.

Heres a link to a how-to on the subject that might help... Rodbuilding.org - FIT AND FINISH

I use a product from House of Kolor called Marblizer....its applied in the same manner as you described, by spraying it over the basecolor and then using the gladwrap to manipulate the pattern....you can come up with some sweet looking effects....try using bubble wrap and you'll get interesting scaled patterns.....the marblizer ive got is a neutral color that I must add powered pearls with to get a contrasting color...otherwise I think it only comes in a few colors....they look best when sprayed over a dark base, but you can get cool effects over light colors too.

Ya know the funny thing is, I wasn't trying to correct anyones spelling...I was trying to confirm the brand name so i'd know we were talking about the same unit....lol:yes:

Is this what you guys are callin "Sintra"?.....I use to paint signs on this stuff....never thought about gluing it together and carving a lure from it till now...lol.....I threw this sample pack into a bowl of water and it floats, so if it'll glue without any problems I might have to try it.

I've seen the rod builders use this technique....you might wanna check out how they do it.

Gee ........ I'm sorry ....... Mr Knowitall must be the expert so please don't even try that one you bought because this guy says it won't work ...... sell it immediately ......I never said it wouldn't work....I said they are no good for continous duty airbrushing and you'd eventually want something better.....because after all that air brush company that I can't spell lies about their product's specs so watch out....So your suggesting all marketing ads are telling the gospel truth about their products and wouldn't lead potential customers astray just to make a buck?.....(by the way, airbrush is one word not two)..... Wow I am sure glad he set me and the world straight ..... after all he is the expert .....Again, something i've never claimed to be....although I do have over 30yrs experience using the airbrush, and over 20 of that in a professional capacity, so call it what you want.... gee I guess I better sell my $200 Airstar V's that I have been using and are made specifically for airbrushing and buy a $50 Walmart compressor that he recommends .....Go for it if you want, but your 1/8hp T&C Airstar is a little bit better unit then the 1/10hp Paasche D500 in question.....not alot but alittle....it even has auto shutoff and a built in regulator.....something the D500 doesn't have......I can't speak for the Walmart unit cause I haven't used one....just suggesting that you could get good performance and more air pressure from a little bigger unit with a holding tank, and Walmart sells one for around $50......I didn't know what i was missing .....you still may not.....Thank you sir for setting me straight .....Anytime.... .......... I'm sorry I said you may at least want to try what you bought .....I agree, try it before you take anyones advice...specially mine..... and that I liked mine .....I'm glad you do... I must be wrong ....Your words, not mine...... please accept my apologies .....Accepted....Have a great day.