RayburnGuy

There was a post recently about a popular clear coat that was now available in an aerosol can. I'm having a "senior moment" right now and can't remember which one it was so maybe someone else can do the remembering for me. Ben P.S. Found it. The search feature is a wonderful thing. Here's a link to the thread. http://www.tackleunderground.com/community/topic/32103-kbs-diamond-clear-coat-aerosol-can-update/

The epoxies we use are meant to be measured by volume. Not weight. You can use a scale to measure the two parts, but the weights won't be equal. Ben

Ice fishing here in Texas is when your digging around in a cooler full of ice looking for that last beer. Ben

The first question would be what top coat are you spraying? Ben

Dang JR. That sucks. I hate to see animals get hurt. My lab got ran over as well. He wasn't as lucky though. We lived out in the woods and it was over a mile to the highway so he pretty much had the run of things until my ex decided she would look cool riding around town with the dog in the back of the truck. I'd told her to tie him in the truck if she carried him to town, but since she was sooooo much smarter than me she decided it wasn't necessary. Too bad I didn't get to make the choice as to who got ran over. Hope your dog is OK and that he heals up quickly. Ben

Now I know what to get you for Christmas. A years supply of Band-Aids. Ben

Labs are great dogs. You can't ask for a better companion. They want to be with you all the time. The story and the pic sure make me miss mine. Ben

Doesn't varnish tend to yellow over time? If you handle your baits you have two choices to avoid getting fish eyes. You can either do as Mark suggested and wear gloves or you can thoroughly wash your hands in hot water (as hot as you can stand it) and Dawn dish washing liquid. I prefer the latter as my hands sweat profusely when wearing any type of rubber or synthetic glove and I end up with a glove full of slime. Have not had a single fish eye in several years of painting since I started washing my hands prior to every bait building session. If your painting plastic cranks it also doesn't hurt to make sure your baits are clean before painting. There's no telling how many times plastic blanks have been handled before they get to you and no telling what was on peoples hand when they were handling them. just my Ben

My pleasure Mark. Could the soft balsa flexing be a contributor to the Solarez cracking? Hopefully the denser balsa reinforced with super glue will help alleviate any flexing problems. If I remember correctly Solarez is pretty hard. I know I had problems with being able to make it flake off the bait by rubbing it hard with a thumbnail, but I thought that had more to do with adhesion to the lure than being hard or brittle. For whatever reason that's why I stopped using it. Ben

Great link SLT. Lot of good info. Thanks for posting. Ben

If your looking for a bright gold color have you tried spraying Createx sunshine (or is it sunrise) yellow over silver foil? Ben

Sounds like you need to give the folks at Mudhole a call and explain your problem. They're in the business of providing components for building custom rods and if anybody can help you they should be able to. Ben

Unless I'm mistaken crawfish turn a different color when molting. This would definitely be a visual clue. Ben

Pretty sure my nut is cross threaded.

Are you using anything to dry the paint between coats? Ben

I seriously doubt that the pieces you have are 100% nickel. Nickel is used mostly as an alloy in other metals to enhance certain characteristics of a desired material or as a plating material such as gun finishes. Heat treating metal is, at best, a crap shoot for the home builder. To properly hear treat metals you need to be able to control temps, exposure time, cooling temps, etc. As you have found out it can be fairly easy to make some metals hard. The difficult part is then annealing it so it isn't so brittle that it easily breaks. On a part that small you are going to find it extremely hard to control how fast the part cools unless you have a furnace that will allow you to bring the temp down gradually. The annealing process is just as important, if not more so, as the hardening. Several years back I tried something similar with hooks. I wanted a hook with a specific bend in it and at that time nothing was offered in a factory hook. The first couple I did worked great. After losing the originals I tried bending more to replace the lost ones. Never was able to duplicate the original result and ended up losing some good fish due to the hook snapping. Good luck on getting something that will work for you. Ben

Try adding weight in small increments until it either corrects the problem or it sinks like a rock. You want to use as little weight as possible to correct the problem. If it sinks like a rock and still hasn't solved the problem then you may have to change the design of the bait. If it does solve the problem then you will know there is too much weight above the centerline. To keep the sink rate of the bait as it is now you will have to raise the tow eye. By raising the tow eye you will have raised the center of gravity. Raising the center of gravity is essentially the same thing as adding more ballast since more of the bait will now be below the centerline. Ben

Even if you placed the ballast as low as you could you may not have used ENOUGH ballast to make it swim properly with your current build specs. It all depends on balance. That's why I said to experiment with adding more weight to the hook and seeing how it swam with each increase in weight. We're not really trying to fix this particular bait right at the moment. We're trying to find the problem so we can correct it on the next build. Adding weight to the belly hook is the least destructive thing you can do to the bait right now. You don't have to drill any holes or move line ties or anything else that would require repairs. If adding weight to the belly hook corrects the rolling problem and you feel the bait is too heavy to your liking THEN you can move the line tie higher in the bait. Moving the line tie up will change the center of gravity to a higher point which is sort of the same thing as adding more ballast because you now have more material BELOW the centerline. Ben

I haven't built a lot of swimbaits, but some of the same principles of cranks and swimbaits apply. Body roll is directly related to the balance of weight above and below the centerline from nose to tail. When most of the weight is below this centerline you have a stable lure where the top of the bait doesn't roll/wobble. As you start increasing the weight above the centerline the body starts to roll from side to side. The more weight above the centerline the more body roll you will have until it becomes too unbalanced and blows out. If it were me I would try adding ballast to the bottom of the bait to see how it swims before making any major changes to the lure. This can be done in several ways. Lead wire wrapped around the shank of the hook.............adding a tear drop weight to the hook..............taping lead to the bottom of the bait............etc......etc. This is a quick and easy way to see if ballasting is the problem and it doesn't harm the bait. If added ballast solves your problem then the repair is easy. Just drill a hole in the bottom, add more ballast and repair the small hole. On your next build it might be a good idea to do your testing before paint and top coat. This will save you time and make dealing with problems less frustrating. It can be truly upsetting when you have to start making changes to a finished lure. just my , Ben

Solarfall has a video of how he does his swimbait joints using only simple hand tools. Don't remember offhand exactly which one it is, but a quick search should bring it up for you. Ben

You can also try practicing on a piece of PVC pipe. It's available in different sizes so you can get something close to the size of the baits your painting. It's already white so you don't need to spray a white base coat and it can be used repeatedly. Ben

Check out Hobby Lobby if you have one near you. You can get an Iwata airbrush and save a good bit of money with their 40% off coupon. Ben

We all need to keep up the learning process Mark. When we stop learning it might be because somebody is getting ready to start throwing shovels full of dirt in our face. Ben

I agree completely Bob. As you say the extra cost of hand picked balsa on a per bait basis is ridiculously cheap and you know what your getting within a specific range. Buying balsa at hobby shops can be a crap shoot from one board to the next and will require more steps to strengthen the lure as well since hobby shops usually sell the lightweight balsa used in building model airplanes. Ben

One thing to keep in mind when ordering wood for lures is to order it in a size that keeps the waste to a minimum. For most of the baits I build a 3" wide board allows me to lay out 2 baits on the 3" width and keep enough clearance between them that cutting them out isn't an issue while still keeping waste down. Ben